Giving Directions in English — A2 Speaking Lesson
I got lost in Paris on my first day. Learning direction vocabulary fast is a survival skill.
Tag: speaking
ELT365 · Day 157 — Jigsaw Listening: One Text, Two Groups
In a jigsaw task, different learners hear different parts of a recording. They then share information to complete the whole picture. The information gap creates a real communicative need.
ELT365 · Day 205 — Speaking sub-skills — stress and intonation
Stress and intonation carry meaning in spoken English. A sentence stressed differently changes its meaning or politeness level. Teaching these explicitly improves both production and listening comprehension.
ELT365 · Day 211 — Staging a productive skills lesson end-to-end
A complete productive skills lesson has four stages: lead-in, model and analyse, prepare, produce, feedback. Rushing the prepare stage collapses the quality of production.
ELT365 · Day 210 — Integrating skills: the natural approach
Real communication always integrates skills. Reading sparks speaking; listening generates writing; speaking leads to reading. Design tasks that mirror this rather than isolating skills artificially.
ELT365 · Day 208 — The 4-3-2 technique for speaking fluency
In the 4-3-2 technique, learners tell the same story three times: four minutes, then three, then two. Repetition forces fluency — they stop translating and start retrieving. Nation developed this.
ELT365 · Day 196 — Presentations in EFL: shorter is better
Long presentations overwhelm both speaker and audience. A two-to-three minute talk with one main point and one example is hard enough at B1 and generates better language than a ten-minute ramble.
ELT365 · Day 195 — Reaching a decision: a task structure that works
Decision-making tasks — 'agree on X' — have a natural endpoint, require genuine exchange of views, and generate negotiation language without a script.
ELT365 · Day 194 — Pair work: setting up the information gap properly
For an information-gap pair task, each partner needs a different information card. The setup takes 90 seconds: distribute cards, check they do not show each other, demonstrate, set the outcome.
ELT365 · Day 193 — Roleplay: building a context learners believe
Roleplay works when the scenario is specific and plausible. Vague roles produce vague language. Specific roles with real stakes generate genuine negotiation.