Making Speaking Activities More Effective & Interactive in Online Classes
Getting students to speak can be difficult, but doing it in an online environment can sometimes feel impossible. 😟
Why speaking online is so challenging
When speaking on screen, students might feel like they’re in the spotlight 🎯. They also have to unmute their microphone 🎤, which might mean interrupting someone. And without body language cues, students may feel more vulnerable and less confident when speaking.
Yet speaking is probably even more important to practice in an online environment than in a physical classroom, simply because students cannot easily interact with peers unless the teacher allows them to. This can lead to feelings of isolation and disengagement 😶🌫️.
Rethinking online speaking activities
Here are three questions to consider when designing online speaking activities:
What communication happens in online classes?
Do the materials affect the communication?
How can the teacher get students to communicate more? 🤔
Creating meaningful communication is a cornerstone of language teaching. This means that whenever we create a speaking task, we should consider who is in control.
If the teacher controls everything—the topic, the target language, and how students demonstrate learning—then the activity is likely teacher-centered.
Think of ways to design the activities to be more student-centered 🎯.
Example 1: Jigsaw discussions 🧩
Put students into groups of 3-5 and give them a topic, for example agreeing or disagreeing with an opinion (like whether people should be allowed to bring pets into restaurants), or getting them to solve a problem (such as finding a solution to a common public transportation problem in their city).
Once they’ve discussed the situation, have them write out some of their ideas on a shared Google doc.
Next, rearrange the groups so that each new group has at least one member from each group. Have them discuss their findings and then reach a consensus of the best idea/opinion/solution.
Example 2: Advice posters 📝
Give students an audio where a problematic situation is presented. Then put students into small groups and have them discuss the following questions:
Did the situation bother you? Why/why not?
What would you do in this situation?
Students then share advice for the situation through a Do and Don’t list that they create using an online tool like Canva. These posters can be uploaded to a class-shared document like Google slides or Padlet 📌, where other groups can write questions or make comments 💬.
Don’t leave speaking tasks for the end ⏳
“The worst place to put a communicative activity is at the end of the lesson.” — Thorburn, 2021
Carefully consider the time needed for a speaking task. In addition to the time it takes to actually do the task, you need time to arrange the groups and get students into (and out of) the breakout rooms.
One solution is to put students into home groups for longer periods of time. Then students can choose their breakout rooms manually.
More importantly, introduce speaking tasks early in the lesson and weave them throughout 🧶. When the speaking task is left until the end of the lesson, the teacher often runs out of time and students rush through the task without any meaningful interaction, and speaking just feels like another classroom task that must be endured.
Final thoughts and a question for you 💡
With these tips, you're ready to design more effective and engaging online speaking activities. Remember, practice makes progress 🚀. As Kerr (2017) said:
“Without opportunities to re-use and interconnect the language they have studied, learners’ knowledge about language may never become the ability to use it.”
What are some other problems students have with speaking in an online environment? What techniques or activities do you use in online classes to get students speaking? Drop a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts. 💬
Happy teaching! ✨
Kari
References
Curry, N. (2018, June 22). The value of speaking when learning. Cambridge University Press.
Thorburn, R. (2021). Getting students to communicate in English online. IATEFL.