Speaking Lessons in Online Classes

Remember with speaking it is similar to the format of the other skills, you need to pinpoint specific topics to touch on with your students during each class. Make sure to always provide the format for speaking with your own example and then lead into your students speaking right after that looks for the same production. Always speak clearly and give your students some time to think and then answer or reproduce the language. Also remember to have proper organization in your classes so that everyone isn’t speaking at the same time, you want to make sure to stick to your classroom management systems and make sure there is a proper order for speaking and that students aren’t talking over each other or that no one can hear the speaker. 

Also, for speaking, remember that not every student will be ready to produce language right away. For some students it will take a lot of lessons for them to build up their confidence in order to finally produce the language. However, it is still important to remember that you should still encourage them to speak and work with them even if they are unable to produce the language in class always, so that they know they can start producing when they are ready to. Make sure to build up your students' confidence and give a lot of positive reinforcement. There are also times where you will need to correct your students and their speaking, but try to always be kind while giving feedback. If students feel ashamed or discouraged over their mistakes it can lead to them becoming much more withdrawn in classes and unwilling to participate in any aspect of the lessons. Also keep your students' age in mind, as with older learners you can be a bit more direct with error correction in speaking, but with younger kids you might want to have them repeat the phrase again in a group or just say it again yourself. Always play to your students and don’t fall into one style of error correction when it comes to speaking.

Another key point in online speaking lessons is remembering the difference between one-on-one learning and group lessons. During one-on-one learning you will be able to interact a lot more with your student and will be put in a situation where interaction is not going to be a difficulty. However, when it comes to group lessons it will often be difficult to get interaction from every single student, so you should make sure that you use the tools and features that you have in the program that you use in order to make sure everyone gets a chance to participate in class.