Learners of English are often reluctant to open their mouths and speak, and in turn, teachers around the world worry about trying out speaking activities in their class in case they grind to a halt. Who better then than Sarah Cunningham, co-author of Cutting Edge, to share her experience of writing speaking activities in this book. Sarah focuses on setting the students up to succeed. In order to do this, the writer has many things to consider: identifying the purpose of the speaking activity, finding appropriate topics for the target audience, stimulating interest in the topic, providing a reason to communicate, making rubrics clear, providing key language or a model, and avoiding potential problems that could bring the activity to an untimely halt. An Activity Bank doubles up as a reference as you work through the tasks in the book, and as a useful list to refer back to when you’re writing your own speaking activities.

This book forms part of the ELT Teacher 2 Writer training series. The series is designed to help you write better ELT materials, either for publication, or simply to improve the quality of your self-produced classroom materials.