Done by: Ruziyeva Muhayyo Navoi-2022 year

Make It Real: 7 Foreign Language 
Speaking Activities That Simulate 
Real-world Conversation 
Do you want your language students to go further 
than parroting back given words and sentences? 
Are you looking for classroom speaking activities 
that get students to really, truly, actively use their 
brains? 
That shows you care. Something tells me that 
you’re 
a wonderful teacher
. 
And, 
lucky 
for 
you, 
I 
have 
seven 
such 
activities
 in this post. 
Before we get to them, I’m going to take a wild guess and talk about the 
reason 
why
you’re looking for speaking activities in the first place (see if I get it) and 
why it’s so important to find the right ones. 

---

 
Why True Speaking Is True Learning 
If you’re teaching somebody to ride a bike, 
it would be patently obvious that you don’t 
simply let them watch a series of YouTube 
videos, give a lecture on speed and balance or 
deliver a heartwarming talk on road safety, right? 
These things are good to know, but these 
learning experiences are only vicarious at best. 
They exist only at the periphery of riding a bike. 
To teach somebody how to ride, you have to let 
them hop on and find their balance. You have to 
let them sit on a bike and have them reach for the 
handle bars. 
You stand at the back of the student, holding the bike upright. You begin by 
giving them a little nudge, a push to start them off. You trot along, working with your 
student as he struggles to keep balance and get enough speed. 
As in the history of learning anything, there will be starts and stops, mistakes, 
adjustments and even nasty falls. But with your guidance and encouragement, those 
missteps gradually fade away. 
This goes for a host of other teaching activities, like teaching somebody how to 
swim or shoot a free throw. The learners have to actually do it, roll up their sleeves 
and engage in the target activity—over and over until they get the hang of it. All the 
attendant mistakes, failures and false starts are a given. That’s called learning. 
It would then follow that, in teaching a language, much of what we do in the 
classroom should involve students opening their mouths and trying out the target 
language. There is, of course, room for 
grammar, syntax and proper sentence 
construction
, but what’s more important is for us teachers to give opportunities for 
students to speak—to feel how the words and phrases roll off their tongues, to 
actually hear themselves 
enunciate strings of vocabulary
. Along with listening and 
comprehension activities, speaking activities belong in the priority list of every 
language teacher. 

---

Talking of speaking activities, the most productive type isn’t one where you 
say, “
Si!
” and the whole class repeats after you with a chorus of “
Si!
” Maybe the 
listen-and-repeat scheme may work for absolute beginners, but when you really want 
your students to acquire the language, you need to allow them to really 
use
the 
language. 
Provide meaningful context for the utterance while you’re at it. Let them 
observe the language as it’s being used: to talk to a friend, to greet a stranger, to ask a 
question or to buy stuff. 
Let your students have at it—with all the mistakes they can muster. You not 
only allow them to use the language, but you, the teacher, also give your students the 
clear and unequivocal permission to make mistakes. 
Don’t worry that they’ll butcher the language or that they’re not yet ready for 
the big leagues. You’re there to guide them—just like somebody teaching a little girl 
to ride her first bike. 
The following are seven activities that you may use in class in order to 
encourage students to open up and speak up. They provide meaningful context to the 
utterance, making the language come alive.