Will Slade's Language Teaching Blog

In previous posts I've mentioned an interest in group improvisational story telling; I love role play activities that use improvisation, and even the URL of this blog has the word "improv" in it. I wanted to give some ideas for places where teachers and language learners can experience and learn about improv techniques and games for fun and for language learning. In Austin, there are a variety of theaters that put on Improv shows and teach classes in improvisational acting. I am most familiar with the Hideout , the Salvage Vanguard Theater , and Coldtowne Theater . Check them out! I can especially recommend the P-graph show on Thursday nights at 8:00 at Coldetown or classes from Andy Crouch at the Hideout. For games, check out these sites and blogs: Five Minute Fillers , Larry Ferlazzo's games for students , Dave Kees Teach English in China Also, great board games for creative, spontaneous speech are Apples to Apples (especially the youth version), Balderdash ,...

In our Oral English class with Alison McGreggor we've been looking at a lot of pronunciation and prosody sites. I want to share some of them: http://www.manythings.org/ has a ton of resources. I like the minimal pair practice for segmental perception. If a Spanish-speaking student needs help with B-V or a Korean student needs help with F-P http://www.manythings.org/pp/ This may not be explicitly a speaking exercise; however, research suggests that perceiving sounds in your target language leads to being able to produce those sounds (Pennington, 2007). http://www.englishlearning.com/ is another cool pronunciation site that a classmate shared with us. http://www.eltgames.com/ESL-jobs-CoUpIn.htm has some great conversation games. I find games to be one of the best ways to practice speaking. http://speak-read-write.com/tonguetwister.html gives you tongue twisters. I love tongue twisters for practicing speaking, because they give focused practice in context, and they are fun ...