Chapter 13: Setting Their Tongues Wagging: Speaking and Discussion 185
This warmer is good for getting a team spirit going right from the begin-
ning of the lesson.
✓ Current affairs: Noting what’s going on in the world often leads to
some interesting discussions in the classroom. You can just write a
headline on the board, or stick up an image from a newspaper and ask
the students what they know about it. Then get their opinions on the
story. It works best when you find a humorous story or one with a hint
of controversy (but nothing that may offend or hit or a raw nerve).
Talking about communicative activities
This kind of activity has been popular for many years now in TEFL.
Communicative activities generally involve pairs of students sharing informa-
tion with each other to complete a task.Communicative activities come in many different forms but usually involve
a Partner A and a Partner B. Each partner needs to ask each other fact or
opinion-based questions after receiving initial prompts from you. Sometimes
you give them a worksheet which has gaps in it but the gaps are different for
each partner. The pair must then hide their own sheet and come up with a
question to ask their partner who, as a result, gives them information that
they use to fill in a gap. On the other hand the activity may perhaps involve
a list of topics or situations to ask a partner about so that the students talk
about their own lives.Communicative activities are practical because they often don’t require any
imagination or opinions from the participants. They just provide a context
for some solid practice of a particular grammatical structure or some new
words.This type of exercise also accustoms students to working with each other
and gets them moving about a bit. As in most cases the students aren’t
allowed to see each others’ information, you can get them to sit or stand
back to back, for example.Table 13-1 is an example of a communicative activity designed to practise the
phrase ‘How much is/how much are the... ?’