About This Site

The aim of this site is to offer teachers a varied range of classroom activities for practising oral English. Most are commmunicative activities designed to give students conversation practice, although a few have other aims. The activities are drawn from this site's author's experience teaching oral English in a Chinese university.

Oral English activities made in China.

What makes this site different to other ESL resources on the internet? English teaching is something happening in scores of countries, in thousands of different institutions, in situations that differ widely in their aims, methods, and their physical and social environments. Although many free resources are available on the internet, as well as a growing number of pay-for-use sites, I found it difficult to locate ideas to suit my specific needs teaching a weekly one-and-a-half hour oral English class. Furthermore, despite the huge amount of material for English students that is available in Chinese bookstores, there is not much aimed at teachers and not much material for oral English based on communicative principles. Thus, the internet becomes an all-the-more vital resource. I hope that this site will help to fill the void that I feel exists. Although many of the ideas are transferable to other countries and other class formats, the target audience of this site are those teachers who are asked to teach an "oral English" or "conversational English" class in China or a country with a similar system of English education (including many countries in Asia).

Having said that, every English school or university department is of course different, but the main features that have influenced my lesson planning are:

• Intermediate level and above. Most students in China study English in high school, so although some university students lack fluency, most of them have enough grounding in English to cope in a conversational situation.
• Teaching only oral English. At a university, students who major in English usually have separate classes which focus on reading, grammar, or listening, and even pronunciation is differentiated from oral English (although the classes for non-English majors, and classes at some private schools, may be more integrated). Often, foreign teachers are assigned to teach only oral English classes. Of course, it may be necessary to revise some grammar or introduce some new vocabulary as part of the lesson, but the activities you set for the students to do should focus mainly on oral English skills.
• Repeated lessons. If you teach oral English to four different classes all at the same level, then you can afford to spend more time preparing material for the lesson than you could afford if the lesson was only given once.
• Large classes. Most of my classes have had at least thirty students. Aside from classroom management issues, this means that any activities organised as a full class will have little value as oral English practice: only one student can talk at a time, and usually only a small number of confident students will offer input. Of course, there might be other reasons for doing these kinds of activities (classroom atmosphere, change of pace, etc), but in general lots of pairwork and groupwork is necessary in order to give the students more opportunities to speak.
• Limited mobility. My experience has mainly been with a large class in a tiny classroom. Although the desks (usually arranged in rows) are not actually fixed, moving them is infeasible. Some kinds of mingling activities can work, but not ones that require constant movement or forming new groups. In fact, I did have one class that met in a larger room with no desks, only chairs, and I was able to try many activities in this classroom that wouldn't have been possible with my other classes (these activities are marked with no desks as a requirement).
• Limited photocopying. If I photocopied one B5 sheet (the standard size here) per student per 45 minute period, then it would cost me about 15% of my wages. So I rely as much as possible on the textbook, smaller handouts, or handouts which I can collect and reuse in the the next class. (That's good news for the forests!)
• Instructions in English. Although university students have fairly good oral comprehension, if you try to explain a very complicated activity to a class of thirty using English, there is bound to be a lot of confusion. More straightforward, easily explained activities are therefore preferred.
• Monocultural. Of course it's good to introduce some aspects of western culture when the opportunity arises, but when planning discussion topics and the like it's better to stick to subjects that are familiar and relevant to university students in China. Also, a small number of the activities on this site assume that the students can read chinese. (Note: I write "monocultural" to indicate the large extent of shared knowledge, but I don't deny the cultural and ethnic variation within China).

The instructions for preparing and carrying out some of the activities are quite detailed. This is partly because the catalogue is for my own reference too, so I hope that experienced teachers will not find these explicit instructions too patronising.

Categories

Language classes can be structured in various ways, but for an oral English class my opinion is that theme-based lessons are the most effective. A series of thematically related activities not only gives a sense of continuity to the lesson, but also means that discussion-based activities can take advantage of the students' thoughts and opinions activated by the preceding activity. Conversely, it is only natural that students coming to a discussion "cold" will need a few minutes to turn their mind towards the new topic.

To encourage and facilitate the planning of theme-based lessons, the activities on this site are arranged in categories according to theme. These groupings are quite broad, however, and I am not suggesting that each lesson ought to cover a different one of these categories. For example, "Hobbies" and "Sports" could be dealt with in two separate lessons, but on this site both these themes are grouped under Recreation.

Each activity is listed under one main category, but may also be cross-referenced in the "see also" section of another category.

File Formats

Some activities include sheets which need to be printed. These are usually supplied in Microsoft Word format. A link to an "html preview" is also given. This preview can be displayed by your web browser without using Word, in order to make reading about the activities more convenient, but it is not suitable for printing.

Feedback

I welcome any feedback about this site, either general comments sent to my email address, or opinions about specific activities which can be posted in the "Comments" section at the end of each activity. If you would like to upload a file to accompany your comment (for example, if you have produced a new worksheet based on one of the activities and would like to share it) then please contact me via email and I will be happy to assist you. Be assured that you will retain the copyright for anything which you contribute.

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