Motivate or forcing to speak?

2. •You are unlikely to learn to speak a new language
perfectly, but perfection should not be your goal.
Your main goal should be effective
communication. I am not perfect in any of the
languages that I speak, but I can communicate,
and whenever I communicate in another language
I’m satisfied. I also know from experience that my
ability to speak and to pronounce well will only

3. • Listen a lot
• Read a lot
• Imitate
• Write
• Record yourself
• Speak

6. •1) reduce your TTT (Teacher Talking Time) in
the classroom, by giving simple and clear
instructions, by asking one or two students to
show (by means of speaking) that they
understood the task instructions, and also by
asking other students to answer a student's
question. Being a teacher of English is different
from being a lecturer.

7. •2) Increasing STT (Student Talking Time), again,
by asking other students to answer a student's
question, by showing pictures related to the
topic of the class and, without saying a single
word, eliciting students' participation.
•3) Avoiding yes/no questions; prefer those
questions that make students speak in order to

8. • 4) Attention to your way of correcting students. Sometimes, even
when your intention is simply to help a certain student, you may
make things even worse to them. For instance, if you want to show a
certain mistake to a student, instead of saying "Oh! this is not
correct, ..." or "You made a mistake, ..." or "Oops! don't say this or
that,..." etc you'd better say "Maybe you should change this or that
..." or "Why don't you use ...", or "Well, it may be even better if you
do/say ..." or "Very good try, but you'd better say/do ..." or "Nice
try/beginning. Now why don't you ...?" or "Good participation/answer,
now I will make it better..." etc.
• 5) When watching student A for mistakes, don't be so close to them
because this will make them even shyer. Instead, get close to another
student or simply stand back or pretend being interested in

9. • 6) When your students are having fluency
practice (for instance, free conversation), which
is totally different from pronunciation or
grammar practice, never correct them, unless
something really serious happen. Let them talk!
Let them feel that they can communicate in
despite of their mistakes in pronunciation,

10. • 7) Not only encourage them to watch movies.
Give them tips on what and how to select what
really matters, based on what they are
interested in. For instance, taking notes on
useful sentences/phrases and thinking about
which environment or opportunity they could
put those selected sentences in action (among
friends, with a teacher, at work, at the club etc),

11. •8) Participating/speaking is what really matters
in this case in question, and when a student
participates (answering questions, clarifying,
helping other in English, arguing etc) ACCEPT
that as something GOOD, despite of being right
or wrong, otherwise you take the risk of
making your student shyer and shyer (lack of
participation).

12. • 9) Activities such as group discussion/debate (topics must be of
students' interest), description of places/things/people in pairs for
guessing, etc tend to help students speak, but remember, if you
stay very close to them, like a "mistake hunter", you might spoil
everything.
• 10) Regarding higher levels (e.g. B 2), role playing could really
enhance students' oral skills. To do this, you'd rather motivate
students to participate in the exercise engaging them at roles they
adore (these may be roles of athletes, actors, singers, heroes etc).
Also, as already mentioned good solutions to improve their
speaking and listening skills could be watching films with English
subtitles which later on could be removed when students feel more

13. •Speaking is a habit. But it doesn't mean that we
do not need a certain strategies. To modify our
students speak up, please, start with a little / a
simple conversation, we must be able to show
to them that speaking English is not difficult.
Make them happy and convenient to learn...
Create some games (traditional or modern).
The point is keep using English as daily

14. • I think that reading or singing will never make students talk.
But 'reading' is excellent to improve vocabulary - you need
vocabulary to talk; 'singing' is excellent to improve
pronunciation - you also need to pronounce correctly when talk
if you want to be understood.
• Starting with short dialogues make students feel more
comfortable and not afraid of conversations.
• Short sentences are just as good (if not better) than long
rambling explanations.

15. • Get over any fear you might have of making mistakes. You will
make mistakes.
• Be patient with yourself. Learning any language can be
frustrating, but frustration won't help you, so let it go.
• Grasp every opportunity you have to speak with people in
English.
• Talk to friends who are also learning English. Go out together
for coffee and only speak English to each other!
• Read short stories out loud and try to see, say and hear the
words to reinforce your memory. Record yourself and play it

16. List words that have the same sound add to the lists as
you learn more words.
For example words that rhyme with me:-

17. • Work on one problem sound at a time. Read slowly
concentrating on the pronunciation of particular words. Record
yourself, keep the tape and record yourself later, have you
improved? Don't be shy - ask a friend to listen to the tape too.
• Don't worry about sounding like a native, it is more important
to speak clearly and pleasantly than it is to sound like the
Queen of England - Even the Queen of England doesn't sound
like she used to.
• The most important thing to think about is can people
understand you? If you have a problem being understood then
find someone who speaks English clearly and try to copy the
way they speak. Pay particular attention to speed and

18. • The biggest obstacle of learning to speak Englis is…not
speaking enough!
• Next is words, words, words. You cannot speak without
words! Learn as many words as you can. Learn frequently used
phrases as units. Practice saying phrases with the correct stress
patterns. You can learn a lot of words without too much effort
by reading a lot.
• Pronunciation is very important, but with English that means
stress patterns.
• Grammar comes somewhat automatically for some people,