Over the Wall of Silence

24 Over the Wall of Silence

having this time to speak with the teacher in semi-privacy. You might be surprised by how much they speak when the eyes of the class are off them. T YPE 3: P REPARE AND PERFORM A CONVERSATION To mix it up a little, you could sometimes have your students spend around 15 to 20 minutes writing a conversation with a partner. After that, they perform their conversation in front of you while the rest of the class is busy doing something else, usually preparing or practicing their own conversations. You give them a grade on their Progress Sheet and move on to the next pair. Goodbye, thanks for coming. Again, with this format you manage to test half of your class per week but this time it’s faster: it takes you only 12 minutes (8 pairs x 1 minute each) + (only 30 seconds of changeover time between each pair, as it’s the teacher who moves to the students). Now, some people might argue that this is not an actual conver sation because it’s written and it’s rehearsed. It’s true that it’s not a real-time conversation. But it’s a good stepping stone activity to more spontaneous speaking, and it has a number of merits: (1) Students enjoy the writing part, because it’s creative and coop erative, and they’re producing language at their own pace. (2) The conversations students produce are quite rich and nu anced. They have the chance to make longer phrases and sentences, show better turn-taking, and sometimes even humor. The slower pace of writing allows students to try and integrate pragmatic com munication skills such as the three “Golden Rules” of conversation, which we will introduce later.