How to get students speaking more in class?

Anyone have ideas on what Flexi teachers could do to get us speaking more, as in free speaking practice(ie. not just reading aloud)?

I was thinking some role plays between students (maybe with short “prompts” to provide some direction) could be good. Afterwards, the teacher could point out mistakes.

Any other ideas to get us speaking more?

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Thanks so much for starting this topic. I am very interested to hear what students will say and definitely make sure that our teaching team will learn from the contributions.
The more specific the better :relaxed:

I just had the perfect HSK1 level speaking lesson with Emma. The whole lesson she let us two students build sentences. Already in the introduction she made us ask each other for the time, place, name… We used the patterns of the lessons, first the easy ones, then added more place and time, asked each other the same, repeated the same a few times, changing the bricks a bit. Ask this, try to say this, how would you say this…
I know the words and grammar of HSK2, but using my knowledge, saying the easiest things spontaneously, remembering things in time when you need it, is something totally different. It simply needs repetition and doing it.

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Great topic! Non-scripted role plays definitely a good idea. When I was first learning mandarin I had a teacher pretend to be a shop assistant, taxi driver, etc which was super helpful - I would still like to practice that way now and think lessons could benefit from that!

I also think some teachers talk a LOT more than the students - which isn’t a bad thing in my book, I like listening, but they should be made aware of having a balance between students and teacher speaking time. I think some teachers do this better than others - I’ve noticed not all teachers ask you to make sentences using all of the new vocab. I had a lesson recently that I liked where at the end, I had to make one sentence that included all the vocab I learnt - difficult, but makes you think creatively!

Lastly, teachers need to understand that just because a student says they don’t have a problem, doesn’t mean that they don’t have a problem - they might be embarrassed / not want to take up time, etc - there needs to be a better way of checking comprehension than just saying “有問題嗎/明白嗎” etc. Not having a problem also definitely doesn’t mean they understand how to use the word they’ve just learnt. I remember in some of the first HSK4 classes I felt like I didn’t want to delay the class when the class had much better Chinese ability than I did - I think this is something to watch out for when the class have quite different fluency levels.

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