MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY





NGUYEN THI XUAN



TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL AT VIETANH COLLEGE:
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS





MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION







Nghe An, 2014
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI XUAN



TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL AT VIETANH COLLEGE:
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS


Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other language (TESOL)
Code: 6014111



MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION



Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr Ngo Dinh Phuong



Nghe An, 2014

i
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that the minor thesis entitled “Teaching speaking skill at Viet
Anh College – Problems and solutions ” is the result of my own work, and
that the minor thesis or any part of the same has not been submitted to any

university or institution.
Vinh, September 2014
Author’s signature


Nguyễn Thị Xuân














ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge with all my greatest attitude the support,
guidance and invaluable critical feedback given by the supervisor - Assoc.
Prof. Dr Ngo Dinh Phuong.
My sincere thanks are due to the teachers and students at Viet Anh
college where I have been teaching in and doing the research.
I am also indebt of my lectures, my friends, my classmates, as well as
my colleagues for their invaluable comments, criticism and encouragement.

Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my beloved
people, my family for their love and encouragement.











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ABSTRACT

Oral skill is one of four required skills making a live language. It has
been taught for the freshmen at the colleges as the compulsory subject.
However, the various situations of teaching and learning this skill cause
obstacles that to achieve.
In order to improve the quality of speaking classes, the study limits
itself to the study on the elementary level with the popular problems and
suggested solutions. The study has been conducted for the purpose of testing
the effectiveness of using language games to motivate students at Viet Anh
college in speaking classes. Thus, three sets of survey questionnaire including
pre-task survey questionnaire and post-task survey questionnaire are used to
investigate students’ attitudes, perspectives towards speaking skill and
language games adapted during speaking lessons, to find out the students’
preferences for employing this technique in mastering speaking skill.
According to the display of theoretical background, the textbook and data

collection on teachers and students, the author had a view on analysis and
came to some suggestions to improve the speaking skill.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT iii
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Rationale 1
1.2 aims of the study 2
1.3 Scope of the study 2
1.4 Research questions: 2
1.5. Design of the study: 2
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1 The history of communicative language teaching in Asia and Vietnam 4
2.2 The typical of characteristics and principles of CLT 5
2.3 The concept of speaking. 5
2.4 The speaking process. 6
2.5 Speaking competence 6
2.6 A successful speaking lesson: 7
2.7 Problems with speaking lessons: 8
2.7.1 Problems faced to teachers: 8
2.7.2 Problems caused by students: 9
2.7.3 Factors affect on oral performance: 10
2.7.3.1 Clustering 10
2.7.3.2. Redundancy 10
2.7.3.3. Reduced forms 10
2.7.3.4. Performance variables 10
2.7.3.5. Colloquial language 10
2.7.3.6. Rate of delivery 10

2.7.3.7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation 10

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2.7.3.8. Interaction 11
2.8 Solutions to speaking problems: 11
2.8.1. Discussion 12
2.8.2. Role plays 13
2.8.3. Simulation 13
2.8.4. Information gap activities 13
2.8.5. Brainstorming 14
2.8.6. Storytelling 14
2.8.7. Interviews 14
2.8.8. Story Completion 15
2.8.9. Reporting 15
2.8.11. Picture Narrating 16
2.8.12. Picture Describing 16
2.8.13. Find the Difference 16
2.9. The text book New Headway elementary 2
nd
edition: 17
2.9.1. The overall design of the text book New Headway elementary 2
nd

edition 17
2.9.2. The general features of The text book New Headway elementary 2
nd

edition: 18
2.9.3. Description of the speaking section 18
CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 The setting of the study: 22
3.1.1 The facts of CLT and teaching speaking in Vietnam: 22
3.1.2 An overview of teaching speaking at Viet Anh college: 22
3.2 Participants: 23
3.3 Data collection instruments: 24
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 26

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4.1. Findings 26
4.1.1. Teachers’ background and experience: 26
4.1.2. Teachers’ opinions about speaking skill 26
4.1.3. Teachers’ opinions about students’ attitudes toward speaking lessons 28
4.1.4. Teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking skill for the freshmen 29
4.1.5. Teachers’ solutions to improve the speaking lessons 30
4.1.6. Students’ background and their experience of learning and speaking
English 32
4.1.7. Students’ opinions towards speaking skill and the speaking lessons in
New Headway elementary 2
nd
edition book: 34
4.1.8. Students’ difficulties when learning English speaking skill 38
4.1.9. Students’ solutions to improve speaking skill themselves 40
4.1.10. Students’ suggested solutions to improve speaking skill themselves . 41
4.2. Discussion 43
4.3. Solutions to improving freshmen’s speaking skill 49
4.4. Summary 54
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION 55
5.1. Conclusion 55
5.1.1 Problems 55
5.1.2 Solutions: 55

5.2. Limitation of the study 56
5.3. Suggested further research 57
REFERENCES 58
PHẦN CÂU HỎI DÀNH CHO HỌC SINH SINH VIÊN 59


vii
TABLES AND CHART LIST:

Table 3.1 Description of speaking section in New Headway elementary book 21
Table 4.1: Teachers’ qualifications and their experience 26
Table 4.2: Teachers’ assessment and attitudes towards speaking skill 27
Table 4.3: Teachers’ assessment of speaking topics and activities in the
textbook 28
Table 4.4: Teachers’ opinions of students’ attitudes towards speaking lessons 28
Table 4.5: Teachers’ difficulties in teaching speaking skill 29
Chart 4.6 Analysis of difficult factors in teaching speaking 30
Table 4.7: Teachers’ solutions to improve the speaking lessons 31
Table 4.8: Teachers’ suggested solutions to improve the speaking lesson 32
Table 4.9: Students’ experience of studying and speaking English 33
Table 4.10: Students’ background of leaning and speaking English 34
Table 4.11: Students’ chance to speak English outside classroom 34
Table 4.12: Student’s opinions towards speaking 35
Table 4.12: Student’s opinions towards speaking lessons in New Headway
book 36
Table 4.13: Students’ opinions towards the speaking tasks of the textbook 36
Chart 4.14: Problems to students in speaking lesson 39
Table 4.15: Students’ difficulties when learning speaking skill 40
Table 4.16: Students’ solutions to improve speaking skill themselves 41
Table 4.17: Students’ suggested solutions to improve their speaking skill 42



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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CLT: Communicative language teaching
ESL: English as second language
TOEFL: Test Of English as a Foreign Language
IELTS: Test Of English as a Foreign Language
FCE: First Certificate in English





















1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale
In order to use English effectively, learners need to develop four skills:
speaking, listening, reading and writing. However, among the four given
skills, it is now generally recognized that speaking plays a key role in
facilitating language learning. Without understanding inputs at the right level,
any kinds of learning simply cannot occur. Speaking, therefore, is essential
not only as a receptive skill but also aims to the development of language
proficiency.
As designed in the course at many colleges and universities in Vietnam,
English has played a very important subject. As more detailed, speaking skill
is recognized as the principal part of language courses.
At Viet - Anh College, speaking is treated equally as other skills in
terms of time allocation. In fact, it has not drawn much attention of both
teachers and learners, they are generally less aware of its importance. In
classrooms, teachers seem to test, not to teach speaking skills. Students cannot
speak effectively. If they are asked to rank the four macro skills in terms of
the difficulty, speaking skill will probably be one of those which are put at the
top of the list.
Most freshmen at the college have a lot of difficulties in speaking. This
gives me a strong inspiration to have an investigation into their speaking
problems through which I can identity kinds of speaking problems and factors
causing their difficulties. Upon above problems, I would like to provide some
suggestions on strategies to help students overcome those problems.
Hopefully, this would help the freshmen at my college to work out possible
solutions to help them can improve the effectiveness of learning speaking at

2

our school. We can make it clearer on the topic “Teaching speaking skill at
vietanh college: problems and solutions”
1.2 Aims of the study
The aims of the study is to investigate the speaking problems of the
freshmen at Vietanh college. Therefore, the specific purposes are :
- To find out kinds of speaking problems encountered by the freshmen
at Viet Anh College.
- To find out factors causing their difficulties in speaking.
- To provide some suggestions on strategies to help the freshmen
overcome those problems.
1.3 Scope of the study
The study is conducted at Viet - Anh College in order to find out the
difficulties in learning speaking of the freshmen. Therefore, the study focuses
on describing the problems and factors causing the given difficulties related to
speaking skill referring to communicative approach only. It limits itself to the
population of the freshmen working on New - Headway elementary book (the
second edition).
1.4 Research questions:
 How do students feel when speaking? What makes Ss feel difficult
when speaking?
 What difficulties do the teachers have in teaching speaking skill?
 What can be done to motivate students’ learning English speaking
lessons and to develop their speaking skill?
1.5. Design of the study:
The study consists of the following main parts as described bellow.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Present the reasons for choosing the topic, aims, scope, significance,
methods as well as the organization of the study.

3

Chapter 2: Literature Review
Review which deals with theories involving speaking and speaking
problems.
- Present the theoretical background which is relative to the topic and
surveys of books and other resources relevant to a particular the study topic
will be presented.
- Present action of the author’s overall view about situation of English
speaking activities at Viet - Anh College.
Chapter 3: Methodology
- Present action of data collection and data analysis methods of the
research.
- Present data analysis and results.
- Present action of the findings drawn out from the analysis of data and
discussion.
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions
- Present some suggested activities for motivating students in speaking
lessons.
- Present some recommendations to improve the problems of teaching
and learning English speaking skills at Viet - Anh College.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
This chapter will summarize what have been done in the research and
offer implications for the study and some suggestions for further research.







4





CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 The history of communicative language teaching in Asia and
Vietnam
According to the history of teaching language, there have been
sequenced methods with different aims. To meet the needs of globalization,
the communicative language teaching approach (CLT) was introduced and
became prominent in the 1970s and early 1980s. With the help of nature of
language by Chomsky and communicative competence by Dell Hymes…, it
were developed in teaching languages. CLT is characterized as a broad
approach which focuses on language use rather than on the language itself.
(Canale, Micheal 1980)
In the last twenty years CLT has been adopted in variety of ESL
institution around the world, Asia and Vietnam. It has widely accepted but in
the fact, grammar translation is applied in teaching at public schools whereas
CLT is at institution and ESL center. However, it has been taught by most
nonnative English- speaking teachers. (James P.Lantolf; 2000)
CLT is considered as the most popular approach in teaching English
nowadays. Many teachers work with CLT on English classes. It seems that
teachers' understanding and practicing of the CLT is questionable.
People believe they are working with a good approach whereas the
appropriateness of CLT in Asia, particularly in Vietnam seems to be
challenged.

5
Among the education system of Vietnam, CLT approach has been

applied in a large number of text books and commercial books. Especially, the
text book used in high schools have been designed as task- based toward CLT
approach since 2006. Meanwhile, most colleges use commercial books as a
teaching aids such as New Headway elementary, Let’s talk
2.2 The typical of characteristics and principles of CLT
In CLT, language learning emphasizes learning to communicate as
opposed to learning a set of rules. A wide variety of syllabus designs and
teaching procedures have been made with the goal as the achievement of
communicative competence. CLT must be based on learners’ communication
needs, including grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence and
strategic competence… Therefore, the learners should be given meaningful
communicative interaction. Moreover, the second language culture should be
taught through the social program. That is to supply the socio-cultural
knowledge and help learners to draw inferences about social meanings or
values of utterances.
2.3 The concept of speaking.
Speaking skill is one of four important skills of language. It has been
studied in by many authors, especially the webs teaching English. Most of
them often find speaking skill interactive and communicative. As written by
Burns, A. & Joyce, H. (1997):
“Speaking is described as an interactive process of constructing
meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information.
Speaking depends on the context or the situation, Context includes the
physical environment, the purposes for speaking is more often spontaneous,
open ended, and evolving. Speaking requires learners to not only know how
to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or

6
vocabulary but also that they understand when, where, why and in what ways
to produce language.”

Therefore, a good speaking skill can help us a lot in communication.
2.4 The speaking process.
Levelt (1989) showed the model of speech processing. There are three
stages including formulation, articulation and conceptual preparation. The
stages may occur and overlap through the process of speech duration. He
showed the factors of language effecting on the process. They are knowledge
about the language grammar, vocabulary register and discourse structure
(formulation); about language pronunciation (articulation); about the topic,
language and context of interaction conceptual preparation (long-term memory,
conceptual preparation). They can take part in the process of making speech.
As students actively engage in the speaking process, their perceptions
can change from moment to moment and from week to week. As individuals
acquire new information, the language they use to make meaning changes. As
they reflect upon information shared or received, they revise their
understanding, further developing their schemas about language and the
world.
The speaking process includes activities that occur prior to, during, and
after the actual speaking event. For example, before speaking, the speaker
might determine the actual content of the message, how it should be
presented, and what kind of audience will be hearing the message. While
speaking, the speaker must attend to such things as presenting a clear
message, tone of voice, suitable vocabulary, possible responses, the
environment, and nonverbal gestures. Following speaking, the speaker might
accept comments, answer questions, explain concepts not understood, and/or
assess the process.
2.5 Speaking competence

7
As having showed above, there is a self- monitoring process.
Monitoring the speech is popular, but some may employ oral communication

strategies. The ability to communicate is to help in oral communicative
strategies. It is considered as speaking competence.
Mentioned by Bygate(1987) , the importance of speaking competence:
“to teach speaking effectively, as teachers, you need to understand what
speaking competence entailed”
The competence in speaking is defined that the ability to communicate
orally in clear, coherent. One with speaking competence can persuade
audience and get their purposes. Developing this competency includes using
experience in making presentations to small or big groups to develope control
of the language.
2.6 A successful speaking lesson:
As Brown and Yule (1983) discussed on the distinguishing between
spoken and written language, spoken language consists of short, fragmentary
utterances, in a range of pronunciations. As this distinguishing, a speaking
lesson should focus on how to make utterances, speeches on a range of
pronunciation.
However, the language in a speaking class is different from real
communication: the content ( predictability); the reason, the result (extrinsic
motivation), the participants and the means. Therefore, to make the speaking
lesson better is to make the language closely resemble with the
communication outside the classroom.
Nunan, D. (1989) came to an inclusion that successful oral
communication involves developing:
- The ability to arculate phonological features of the language
comprehensibility;
- Mastery of stress, rhythm, intonation patterns;

8
- An acceptable degree of fluency;
- Transational and interpersonal skills;

- Skills in taking short and lng speaking turns;
- Skills in management of intersaction;
- Skills in negotiating meaning;
- Conversational listening skills (successful conversations require
good listeners as well as good speakers)
- Skills in knowing about and negotiating purposes for conversations;
- Using appropriate conversational formulae and fillers.
Whereas, Brown and Yule suggest that most language teaching is
concerned with developing skills in short, intersactional exchanges in which
the learner is only required to make one or two utterances at a time.
2.7 Problems with speaking lessons
2.7.1 Problems faced to teachers
The teacher of speaking, in contrast with of the written language must
confront the following types of the question about the form of spoken
language to teach, the important of pronunciation, the grammar in the spoken
production They are listed as below:
- What is the appropriate forms of spoken language to teach?
- From the point of view of pronunciation, what is a reasonable
model?
- How important is pronunciation?
- Is it any more important than teaching appropriate handwriting in the
foreign language?
- If so, why?
- From the point of view of the structures taught, is it all right to teach
the spoken language as if it were exactly like the written language, but with a
few “spoken expressions” thrown in?

9
- Is it appropriate to teach the same structures to all foreign language
students, no matter what their age is or their intensions in learning the spoken

language?
- Are those structures which are described in standard grammars the
structures which our students should be expected to produce when they speak
English?
- How is it possible to give students any sort of meaningful practice in
producing spoken English?
2.7.2 Problems caused by students:
In the above part, we have experienced with the problems faced by the
teacher. These can be traced from the below problems of the students
- Inhibition: Speaking requires production of oral language use and
some degree of real-time exposure to an audience. Learners are often
inhibited about trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom:
worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply
shy of the attention that their speech attracts
- Nothing to say: Although students are not inhibited, they cannot think
of anything to say. They have no motive to express themselves beyond the
guilty feeling that they should be speaking.
- Low or uneven participation: Time devision is an obstacle in
managing the class. Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be
heard; and in a large group, this means that each one will have only very little
talking time. This problem is compounded by the tendency of some learners
to dominate, while others speak very little or not at all.
- Mother-tongue use: It is the habit of language use. The speakers feel
natural when speaking Vietnamese. In mono- lingual class where students share
the same mother tongue , they may tend to use it; because it is easier, because it
feels unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign language. If they are talking

10
in small groups it can be quite difficult to get some classes- particularly the less
disciplined or motivated ones- to keep to the target language.

2.7.3 Factors affect on oral performance:
According to Brown (2001: 270-271), there are eight elements that
make oral performance easy as well as difficult:
2.7.3.1 Clustering
Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically
through clustering.
2.7.3.2. Redundancy
The speakers have opportunities to make meaning clearer through
the redundancy of language. Learners can capitalize on this feature of
spoken language.
2.7.3.3. Reduced forms
It consists of contractions, elisions, reduced vowels…Students who do
not learn colloquial contractions can sometimes develop a bookish quality of
speaking that in turn stigmatizes them.
2.7.3.4. Performance variables
Learners can actually be taught how to pause and hesitate. One of the
most salient differences between native and nonnative speakers of a language
is in their hesitation phenomena.
2.7.3.5. Colloquial language
Students should get acquainted with the words, idioms, and phrases of
colloquial language and that they get practice in producing these forms.
2.7.3.6. Rate of delivery
One of teachers’tasks in teaching spoken English is to help learners
achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency.
2.7.3.7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation

11
These are the most important characteristics of English pronunciation.
They convey important messeges.
2.7.3.8. Interaction

Learning to produce waves of language in a vacuum-without
interlocutors-would rob speaking skill of its richest component.
2.8 Solutions to speaking problems:
- Use group work: Using group work not only increases the sheer
amount of learner talk going on a limited period of time but also lowers the
inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the full class. It
is true that group work means the teacher cannot supervise all learner speech,
so that not all utterances will be correct, and learners may occasionally slip
into their native language; nevertheless, even talking into consideration
occasional mistakes and mother-tongue use, the amount of tie remaining for
positive, useful oral practice is still likely to be far more than in the full- class
set –up
- Base the activity on easy language: In general, the level of language
needed for a discussion should be lower than that used in intensive language-
learning activities in the same class: it should be easily recalled and produced
by the participants, so that they can speak fluently with minimum of
hesitation. It is a good idea to teach or review essential vocabulary before the
activity starts.
- Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest: On the
whole, the clearer the purpose of the discussion is more motivated participants
will be.
- Give some instruction or training in discussion skills: If the task is
based on group discussion then include the instructions about participants
when introducing it. For example, tell the learners to make sure that everyone

12
in the group contributes to the discussion, appoint a chairperson to each group
who will regulate the participation.
- Keep the students speaking the target language: You might appoint
one of the group as monitor, whose job is to remind participants to use the

target language, and perhaps later to the teacher how well the group managed
to keep to it. Even if there is no actual penalty attached, the very awareness
that someone is monitoring such lapses helps participants to be more careful.
However, when all is said and done, the best way to keep the students
speaking the target language is simply to be there yourself as much as
possible, reminding them and modeling the language use yourself: there is no
substitute for nagging.
2.8.1. Discussion
A discussion can be held for various reasons. There are three main aims
of discussion: sharing ideas about an event, finding solutions for a problem.
Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion
activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to
this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other
about irrelevant things. For example, students can become involved in
discussions. In the type of discussion, the teacher can form groups of students,
preferably 4 or 5 in each group, and provide controversial sentences like
“people learn best when they read vs. people learn best when they travel”.
Then each group works on their topic for a given time period, and presents
their opinions to the class. It is essential that the speaking should be equally
divided among group members.
At the end, the class decides on the winning group who defended the
idea in the best way. This activity fosters critical thinking and quick decision
making, and students learn how to express and justify themselves in polite
ways while disagreeing with the others. For efficient group discussions, it is

13
always better not to form large groups, because quiet students may avoid
contributing in large groups. The group members can be either assigned by
the teacher or the students may determine it by themselves, but groups should
be rearranged in every discussion activity so that students can work with

various people and learn to be open to different ideas.
Lastly, in class or group discussions, whatever the aim is, the students
should always be encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase ideas, express
support, check for clarification, and so on.
2.8.2. Role plays
A widely spread and one of the best communicative activities is a role
play which trains the students in the classroom to deal with unpredictable
real-life conversation in an English speaking environment. The special
reasons for using the role play in the lessons is that it puts students in
situations in which they are required to use and develop language necessary in
social relationships and helps them to build up their social skills. Using role
play is useful especially while teaching shy students who have difficulty
participating in conversation about themselves. Through this activity they are
put into various roles and no longer feel that their own personality is
implicated. Role play is an essential communicative technique which develops
fluency, promotes interaction in the classroom and increases motivation.
2.8.3. Simulation
Simulation is a kind of role play but the emphasis is put on creating the
atmosphere of a real world. Students pretend they are a part of a simulated
environment and take part either as themselves or are given a role and pretend
being someone else. To achieve a suitable simulated environment, the
classroom is usually rearranged and, where possible, converted in a required
place according to the situation.
2.8.4. Information gap activities

14
Information gap activities are described by Thornbury (2005) who
claims that in these kinds of tasks there is a knowledge gap among learners
and it can be bridged by using the language. So, in order to obtain the
information, the interactants have to communicate.

The most common information gap activity is spotting the differences in
the pictures, exchanging personal information, guessing games and also
creating the story based on flashcards shown to the students in random order,
for a few seconds and one flashcard per group only. This makes the students
cooperate and communicate with each other to find the lacking information.
2.8.5. Brainstorming
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending
on the context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and
learners generate ideas quickly and freely. The good characteristics of
brainstorming is that the students are not criticized for their ideas, so students
will be open sharing their new ideas.
2.8.6. Storytelling
Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from
somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their
classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students
express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and ending, including
the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or
jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class session, the teacher
may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening.

2.8.7. Interviews
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people.
It is a good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they
know what type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students

15
should prepare their own interview questions. Conducting interviews with
people gives students a chance to practice their speaking ability not only in
class but also outside and helps them becoming socialized. After interviews,
each student can present his or her study to the class. Moreover, students can

interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to the class.
2.8.8. Story Completion
This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which
students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after
a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate
from the point where the previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to
add from four to ten sentences. Students can add new characters, events,
descriptions…etc
2.8.9. Reporting
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or
magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most
interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they have experienced
anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives before class.
2.8.10. Playing Card
In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will
represent a topic. For instance:
- Diamonds: Earning money
- Hearts: Love and relationships
- Spades: An unforgettable memory
- Clubs: Best teacher
Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will
write 4-5 questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group.
However, the teacher should state at the very beginning of the activity that