Speaking activities!

Speaking activities!

I try to have my students speak for a few minutes each day. In the lower levels, I find that activities that promote production can be the most difficult to create. After all, why should the student feel motivated to speak in Spanish, when they can already communicate with their classmates in English?

It is important to recognize that speaking in the foreign language classroom is probably the most inauthentic task that we ask our students to do. After all, outside of sheer practice, there is no good reason to speak Spanish in the classroom, and many students are not motivated by the need to practice. Nevertheless, I continue to believe that teaching speaking is integral to teaching a language (if not the most important) so I will continue to try to create semi-authentic reasons for speaking Spanish, such as the desire to win a game. By following this link, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/6-speaking-games-for-the-foreign-language-classroom-requiring-only-a-ball  you can find some of my free speaking activities. While they are not fool proof, they do provide students with both tactile stimulation and small motivation to try to use the language.

I like to keep my whole class speaking activities short. Additionally, I recast incorrect pronunciation when it is significantly different from the correct pronunciation of a word, but I do not force correct pronunciation upon my students, as part of my goal is to encourage them to speak. I do not want to be so tough on pronunciation that students are discouraged from trying. What do you think? Do you allow pronunciation to go uncorrected or do you always re-cast or repeat the word using the correct pronunciation?  What other ideas do you have to encourage speaking in the lower levels of language learning?