Designing engaging speaking activities – without too much effort

Saturday, November 4th, 10:00 to 13:00

Berlin School of English (2nd Floor), Charlottenstraße 81, 10969 Berlin

In the typical needs analysis, all our students say that they want to speak more. They may speak in the classroom when answering questions, but they need to practise particular speaking situations that they need to master at work, on holiday, at school and so on.

Now, when designing such activities, we need to pay attention to a number of aspects: a) they need to be engaging and meaningful; b) students need to be able to build confidence and to see progress in their performance; c) they need to be reusable and recycle and fit a number of context to avoid excessive preparation time on behalf of the teacher; d) they need to be manageable even for learners at lower levels (A1, A2) who are missing out on fluency and accuracy alike. In this workshop, you will be able to try out a number of tools and look at how to prepare them efficiently. Games and discussion activities, group work and task-based activities, one-on-one and large group activities will all be dealt with. Participants will switch between teachers’ and learners’ position to allow for a high level of interactivity, reflection and discussion.

The workshop will be led by Kirsten Waechter. Kirsten has been an internationally working business English trainer since 1998. Having taught in-company course for many years, today she focuses on teaching business communication, English for special purposes and intercultural courses, and very often those courses overlap as it is hardly possible to disentangle the web of language, culture and communication. She has designed her own materials in this field and provides teacher training. In addition, she is a translator and writer and materials developer. She has authored guidebooks on Meetings in English and Emailing in English for Cornelsen Scriptor and the e-book Prepping Clients for Financial Reporting together with Phil Wade. If she is not at work, she divides her free time between Germany, Scotland and Sweden.