Hi, I'm looking for some ideas for lessons to teach my Mathayom 1 listening and speaking classes as I seem to be running a bit dry. The lessons need to be simple for them to speak as the general level is quite low. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers...Mike

If they have a textbook, use it only as it helps you teach speaking and listening. Many texts do not.

It is okay to repeat whatever worked before, slightly modified My good M1 classes used to know certain routines, such as using the board to write sentences, and everybody had to read every sentence out loud.

You could use groups of two to four for rather mind-numbing talk. Hi, what is your name. My name is XXX. Where are you from. Do you have a brother or sister. What work does your father/mother do? Give them a list of "Up To You" talk subjects and they choose which lines to talk about. Favorite music, colour, team, etc.

I teach M1-M3. There are so many activities you can do if you want to get away from the textbook for awhile to increase your Ss listening and speaking skills. For example, I require each student M1,M2, and M3) to give a 1-2 minute speech in front of the class every week. It is a great way for them to work on their pronunciation, word order, presentation, plus it is a great confidence boost for the Ss and they really seem to enjoy it. I do not critique the individual student but the class as a whole since most make similar mistakes. Speeches are a great way to get your Ss to open up. There are endless topics to choose from. You may have to split this into two classes depending on the amount of Ss and time. Many Ss may be shy at first but you would be surprised how fast their confidence increases.

A good listening exercise is music. If you have access to a CD player (or sound lab which we have a my school) pick a song (CD,mp3, etc.) that is clear and easy to understand. Copy the lyrics and remove certain words making it a gap fill exercise. You can really mix this activity up. For example, you may be teaching a particular part of speech or verb tense, various verbs or countable nouns ending in "s" etc. Remove say 10-15 words such as all of the past, present, future simple tense from the lyrics (depending on class level). Play the song over and over until all of the gaps are filled in. Even if they don't get all of them right, it still forces them to listen and "trains their ears" My Ss (M1-M3) really enjoy this activity as well.

Thanks for those ideas I'll give them a go next term. Always good to try something new and freshen the whole thing up. I'll let you know how it went. Cheers.