I am really good at having students read and listen and we do quite a bit of writing but I struggle to get in enough speaking. I teach middle school level one and they tend to be anxious so I leave it out a lot of the time. I usually try to incorporate speaking through the daily password, special person and the Q&A game. I will continue to use these activities but I want to be better at working it in every day to get them really comfortable. This year I am trying to work in more speaking activities from the beginning to get my students practicing speaking and answering questions they should be able to fire off at the drop of the hat. I want to do it slowly over time so that I can build rather than have a “speaking unit” at the end of the year (because boring, and they want to be able to speak from the first day).

Like babies, language learners go through a period of time known as the silent period where students are listening and acquiring but not speaking. I want to make sure students feel very supported in speaking from the beginning, using lots of modeling, gestures and repetition but keeping it moving quick enough to keep it interesting.

I started with just “Bonjour, je m’appelle__” and I would introduce myself and ask a student their name. I would then repeat “il/elle s’appelle___” and have the class say “bonjour ___”. The next day I built on it by then asking them another students name and having them repeat the whole sentence. The following day I added “ça va?” with the answers “ça va bien” and “ça va mal” projected. I made sure to ask each student, starting with the more outgoing and braver students. Having the potential answers projected supported them in what to say and they were hearing potential answers over and over.

See my actual slides from the first three days below. They are very simple.

I don’t ask them every question every day but any of the previous questions are fair game so I will throw a couple in to continue the repetitions and keep them practicing so the answers become automatic. As we progress through the year I will add in more complex questions while continuing to recycle the questions from the beginning of the year. The speaking practice was only part of the lesson to keep the lesson moving at a good pace while allowing students to engage with the language.

I am hoping that students left our first class with a feeling of “Wow! I can already speak French!”

All the best,

Robyn