Get ESL Students Speaking with Speed Speak & Listen Quick

What would you say if I told you I could get a class of 45 grade 1 beginner ESL students speaking with each other in English? Would you say it’s impossible? What if I told you I’d seen dozens of teachers do it, or that I’d included student to student speaking in my first lessons with students as young as 4 years old?

Getting large classes of students to speak with each other isn’t as difficult as you might think, and in fact doing so will make your job easier. With just a few key elements you can motivate large classes of students to happily use English with each other in any of your lessons. The games Speed Speak and Listen Quick will get you there.

How to Play Speed Speak and Listen Quick

Play these games toward the end of class after you’ve taught the target language and students have had a chance to practice and get familiar with it.

To illustrate these games, let’s keep it basic with students learning numbers one through ten. Put students into groups of three to five. Assign someone to go first.

In Speed Speak, the first student holds up some of their fingers for the others in their group to see and asks “How many?” The others look and quickly say the number.

The fastest student to respond correctly now gets to hold up their fingers for the group and ask “How many?” The students rush to answer and whoever is fastest gets to go next. Everyone continues playing until time runs out.

In Listen Quick the actions are reversed. The first student says something, such as “five” and the others in their group rush to hold up the correct number of fingers. The fastest student to respond now gets to be the speaker while the others listen and race to respond. The students continue playing until time runs out.

Flexible Topics

You can get ESL students speaking by using these basic games with a wide variety of language & responses. One great method for this is with mime actions. Students can use these actions to give or elicit responses. You can do this for most vocabulary and grammar that children at this level will encounter.

Animals: “Be a monkey/snake/tiger” / “You’re a monkey/snake/tiger!”
Action verbs: “Watch TV! Ride a bike!” / “You’re watching TV! You’re riding a bike!…”
Food: “Eat an apple! Eat a hamburger!” / “an apple!” “You’re eating a hamburger!”

This works well also for jobs, rooms in a house, school subjects, adjectives, and more.

Grade 4 students practicing adjectives with mime actions; fast, slow, big, small, long, short, quiet and loud.

Adapting Speed Speak and Listen Quick

You can introduce many different variations to get your ESL students speaking English.

Flashcard Safari You can also put flashcards up around the room and have students play by pointing at them.

Listen and Point Students can play in small groups with a handout or their books. They can rush to point at the correct picture, speech bubble, or word.

Spelling Dictation Verbal answers also work great for students learning their letters and how to spell short words. They can call out the word or point to flashcards around the room with the words on them.

“What’s this word? H, O, S, P, I, T, A, L”
“Where’s this word? C, L, O, U, D”

True/False In Speed Speak students can also respond with “True” or “False” to increase your game options.

“Cats are bigger than elephants.”
“The weather is sunny today.”
“Doctors work in hospitals.”
“The cat is black.”

The last one, “The cat is black” works well after you’ve done a Coloring Dictation with your students.

A/B Students can also talk about more complicated pictures as well, such as the Picture Differences from the Cambridge Young Learners Exam.

The speaker can describe one of the pictures and their classmates can respond with either “A!” or “B!” for example:

“In this picture there are three pictures on the wall.”
“In this picture I can see a kangaroo on the bed.”
“I can see some books on the table in this picture.”

From Cambridge YLE Movers 8 Speaking Test 1, letters added by me

Why do Speed Speak and Listen Quick work well?

Competition Gets ESL Students Speaking Children simply love games, including races. You can see this at schools with kids playing games that require quick reaction times. Both Speed Speak and Listen Quick include that simple form of competition – who can respond the fastest?

No Need for Rewards When games are fun then children are happy to play them without looking for rewards. There’s no need to make students keep track of scores (though you can if you want) or to provide rewards for winners. Children just enjoy playing.

Low Stakes These games work well, in fact, because there are very low stakes for winning or losing. The winner of each round just gets to be the next leader.

This is great because children, especially the competitive ones, can get obsessed with being the winner or getting the prize. Limiting the focus on winning and rewards prevents students from crying over a missed piece of candy or a lost game.

Instead, you can simply ask students if they had fun at the end and give praise to students/groups who played especially well.

Meaningful It’s important to make meaningful communication central to a speaking activity. What this means is that students should speak to someone who must listen, understand, and respond.

If students speak knowing that nobody is listening then they often won’t care to speak accurately. If you listen to them you often hear rushed gibberish.

On the other hand, students feel more positively about using English when they see others can understand them, even if it’s simple words or phrases. They try hard to make themselves understood.

Repetition Children also need many opportunities to practice the same language chunks to build their confidence. In Speed Speak and Listen Quick each round only takes a few seconds to play and each student has an active role to play. In just a few minutes students can get through dozens of rounds of listening and speaking without needing to wait long for their turn.

Related Post: Increasing ESL Participation Rates

Final Tips to Get ESL Students Speaking

Big to Small It’s a good idea to play a class-wide version of these games first with you as the leader so that students get comfortable. For example, if you’re doing a mime action version, then try playing Drill Sergeant first.

Demonstrate: You should call several strong students up to demonstrate either Speed Speak or Listen Quick in front of everyone. Just a few short demo rounds are usually enough for everyone to get the idea. I always act extra happy when I “win” a round so my students also get excited to play.

Short Answers It works best when the responders only need to do a quick action or say a word or short phrase. Long sentences get muddled and are hard to understand with several students speaking at the same time.

Shared Info Set Make sure to limit the students’ options during these activities. For example, if you’re playing with animal vocab don’t let them choose any animal they want – that’s overwhelming for both the speaker and listeners. Instead give them a list of options to work with and even leave phrases on the board for them to use.

Activity Flow You can also blend these activities with prior listening or controlled speaking practice activities such as dictations and information gaps.

One of my favorite examples uses a class timetable. The students work in pairs in an information gap; each has half of a fictional student’s weekly class schedule and describes it to the other to fill in.

Once everyone is finished then students can get into groups of four and play Speed Speak with the information; “When does Mary have English class?”, “What does Mary have on Tuesday in the afternoon?” or “Does Mary have science class on Monday in the afternoon?”

Board Games: If you’d like, these games can be also be combined with a board game to provide extra competition and allow students to see who is the “winner.” You can find a simple version here.

Assigning leaders: My TA or I always lead the first round with each group when we start groups. This is a quick and easy way to start them playing.

Monitor Make sure you walk around and listen in as students play for later feedback opportunities. You can encourage slower groups to play by doing a couple quick rounds with them.

Mix Groups Sometimes there are students who always win or lose in a group. In these cases you may need to shuffle students in groups to keep everyone engaged, but try to avoid stopping the whole class – this always destroys the momentum of the activity.

Speed Speak and Listen Quick are hands down one of my favorite ways to get ESL students speaking. Give them a try and enjoy!