ACTIVITIES TO PRACTICE INTERPERSONAL SPEAKING:

Here are some that have been shared before:

SIMULTANEOUS PRESENTATIONS

As the name of this activity implies, Simultaneous Presentations involve the Presentational mode
first (students are sharing something that they have prepared with a series of classmates). For it to
become an interpersonal activity, the ‘audience’ must respond in some spontaneous way to the
presenter, and the presenter must respond back with unprepared speech. What I like about
Simultaneous Presentations is that students are provided with something that they can talk about,
and it is different each time that students switch partners.

FAN N PICK

Fan N Pick is one of my favorite Kagan structures, and while the first time that you use it with your
students is a little confusing, it is well worth the effort to make sure they understand how it works. I
love that all group members have roles and that it is very low-stress. Once again, for this to become
interpersonal, that follow-up question or reaction piece is key: otherwise, it’s a presentation activity.

COLLECTIVE INTERVIEW

Collective interviews are really fun and a great way to get responses from all students in the class
without the teacher having to ask and listen to a zillion responses. Remember–interpersonal
requires spontaneity, so the interviewer students must be asking follow-up questions and reacting in
the target language to what their interviewees are saying!

QUIZ QUIZ TRADE

Quiz Quiz Trade works with prepared questions (each student has one when the activity begins). For
that reason, Quiz Quiz Trade is an interpersonal speaking activity if and only if  each partner asks a
follow-up question before partners switch cards and part ways.

…and here are some new ones that I share in my Assessment for Acquisition workshop:

ROLL A ROLE

Roll a role is a great activity to use after you have been exploring a topic in your classes; in particular,
a topic on which there are at least two standard opposing opinions, or perhaps more.
Students are assigned a ‘role’ at random by the roll of a die, and then they are given a question to
discuss. The catch is that they have to discuss the question ‘in character’; from the perspective of the
role that they rolled.

Here is an example: students are assigned one of the six roles below, and from that person’s
perspective, they must discuss with their partner (who has rolled a different  role) whether or not it is
important to learn another language.

SPEED DATING

I love speed dating because it gets students moving (but not too much, ha!) and it allows students to
talk with many different partners throughout the course of the activity.

When I do speed dating activities with my students, I have them form two parallel lines that are
facing each other. Each student is partnered with the student that they are immediately across from,
and then I give them a topic to discuss. Sometimes, I give students a list of questions and they can
choose from any of the questions on the list to talk about; but if you are really going for
interpersonal mode then you need to make sure that the question asker is coming up with their own
follow-up questions and not just reading pre-created language.

After a minute (or even less!), I ding my bejeweled teacher bell, and one of the lines moves to the
left, so that each student is now facing a new partner.

Repeat!

IN SUM

REMEMBER: unless spontaneous, two-way interaction  (that means spontaneous on the part of each
party involved) is taking place, it is not truly an interpersonal speaking activity. HOWEVER, even
without that spontaneous, two-way interaction, all of these activities will build students’ confidence
and competence in the building blocks of Interpersonal communication.