Get conversation going

[Lo.Ft]

I need to find out if anyone has some good advice on getting students to have dialogs with their partners.

Every time i try and get students to do a dialog with a partner, I end up running around like a mad man monitoring, trying to police every conversation with most students just using the time to just chat with their friends, in Korean.

I really want to get this style of speaking working as it disperses the conversation, so its not just me and maybe one or two students talking. But it is so hard to manage.

Any tips?

[Scott]

I think most of us have this problem.  My first few weeks I wanted to freak out. 

There are some things that have worked for me.  Obviously, if you have grades to give out you can leverage them with rewards/demerits for participation/lack of participation. 

Some foreign teachers use candy.  For me, the grades incentive works for my city school but not at my country school (they couldn't care less).  So I'm always armed with candy at my country school. 

As far as activities go, I've found that battleship works well for practicing target language.  The ninja game is good for low levels.  I use information gaps as much as possible.  That's where they need to fill out a worksheet in pairs.  One student has half of the information and the other has the other half.  I did one today with my low level students who were practicing can/can't.  One student will ask 'Can Byeong Tae ride a horse' and the other student will answer 'Byeong Tae can't ride a horse at all'.  It worked pretty well once they figured out what they were supposed to do.  I'll post it to give you an idea.

Every class is different and for those of us who aren't lucky enough to have keener high level students in every class, we have to be creative/patient. 

[lcuriel]

Have you tried the Pass the Paper(ball, etc...) speaking activity? I just adjusted one that someone posted on here for the 6th grade lesson 7 (My Father Is a Pilot/jobs).
My students are repulsed by dialogues. I don't even try anymore. I sympathize with them, as I hated them when I studied foreign languages. This may not be a natural way to get them speaking, but the students don't feel that the dialogues are natural either.
I changed the name of the activity to Pass the Mic.  I have a plastic microphone for them to pass instead of paper or a ball. I did this activity with a balled up piece of paper and the kids loved it. It gets random kids to speak, which is nice.

[Brian]

Make sure you give them plenty of input and plenty of time to practice the phrases you want them to learn and use.  Sometimes it can be a case of students just not being comfortable with it, even though it might just be a couple new words, or a phrase they should have learned three years ago. 

Authenticity helps, too.  Information gap activities work well, where they have to actually find out pieces of information about their partner(s) and classmates.  If it's just reading from a book

Can Zeeto ride a bike?
No, he can't.
Can Minsu swim?
Yes, she can.

over and over and over for ten minutes (as the books sometimes suggest as "speaking" practice), there's really no point and it's definitely not an authentic speaking activity. 

For something like can and can't, to use an example brought up by Scott, the "Find someone who" activity works well because it requires them to talk to a variety of students, actually get information they don't have, and authentically use the language. 

http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,709.0.html

http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,306.0.html

Just one possible idea out of many. 

[Lo.Ft]

Thank you so much for all your words of wisdom, will work with your ideas and see how it goes.

[Lo.Ft]

sweet, i like the Pass The Mic idea, great for stock standard phrases that need a reply, textbook expression freindly.

[k_belle]

Also, the "Connect 4" template/games on this forum work really well!

[Lo.Ft]

where did you find that?

[k_belle]

Explanation:
http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,1426.0.html

[k_belle]

And there's a template on this thread ^^
http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,1321.0.html