Selecting appropriate tasks and materials

The tasks and materials you select for a lesson will clearly depend on various factors. Teachers who are teaching a vocabulary lesson and want to find or design an appropriate speaking practice activity, need to consider the following:

• Is the task / materials age appropriate?
• Is it suitable for the students’ level?
• Is it appropriate to the lesson objectives?
• Does it practise the target language?
• Does it provide opportunities for the students to speak?
• Is it straightforward to set up?
• Will it take an appropriate amount of time?

In addition to this, speaking practice activities benefit enormously from having clear, communicative goals. Making this a priority helps to ensure that tasks are challenging, motivating and enjoyable for the students to complete.

Let’s look at two simple examples of activities used to allow for practice speaking. At first glance, they look very similar, but only one of them has a communicative goal.

Example One

Students work in pairs. They receive a worksheet which looks like this:

1. picture of apples	2. picture of grapes	3. picture of pears
4. picture of bananas	5. picture of oranges	6. picture of strawberries

The students take it in turns to ask and answer, ‘What’s number ______?’ ‘Apples’. (If the students have more vocabulary available, the teacher could also ask them to describe the pictures by saying, for example, ‘There are some apples.’)

Let’s see if this task meets the criteria for a successful speaking practice task:

Checklist:
1. Is the task / material age appropriate?	✔
2. Is it suitable for the students’ level?	✔
3. Is it appropriate to the lesson aim?	✔
4. Does it practise the target language?	✔
5. Does it provide opportunities for the students to speak?	✔
6. Is it straightforward to set up?	✔
7. Will it take an appropriate amount of time?	✔
8. Does it have a communicative goal?	?

Although the task meets most of the criteria, there is no communicative goal. Both students are looking at the same picture together so there is no ‘information gap’ and they have no reason to talk to each other.

Let’s have a look at another example.

Example Two

Again, students work in pairs. They receive two different worksheets:

Worksheet A

1. picture of apples	2.	3. picture of pears
4.	5. picture of oranges	6.

Worksheet B

1.	2. picture of grapes	3.
4. picture of bananas	5.	6. picture of strawberries

The students sit face to face so that they can’t see their partner’s worksheet. Then they take it in turns to ask and answer, ‘What’s number ______?’ ‘Apples’ and fill in the missing space on their worksheet – either by writing the word or drawing a picture. This time, the students have a reason to talk to each other, so the task is communicative. This makes the task more challenging and interesting to complete, so the students will be more engaged.