![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/scott_thornbury_bigger-150x150.png\")
There were two young Catalans at my gym who would while away their time on the exercise bicycles and rowing machines speaking English to each other. It was dreadful, highly accented and very unidiomatic English \u2013 but English, hours of it.<\/p>\n
What prompted them? And what sustained them in what was obviously harder work than the cycling or the rowing?<\/p>\n
I have no way of knowing, but I couldn\u2019t but admire both their initiative and their stamina.<\/p>\n
How can we get our students to do the same or similar?\u00a0 How can we encourage them \u2013 not just to read, write, and listen to English outside the class \u2013 but to speak <\/em>it?<\/p>\n One possible route is offered by technology.<\/p>\n I have a friend who studied Turkish at university and keeps it \u2018alive\u2019 by doing online chats, using Skype, with Turkish speakers. There are a number of agencies that provide this service, putting people in touch with one another for a modest fee. Some of these services work on a reciprocal basis: you speak to me for half an hour in Spanish and I\u2019ll speak to you for half an hour in English. (Just google something like \u2018language exchange\u2019).<\/p>\n But your students might be too young \u2013 or too shy \u2013 to engage in conversation with total strangers. An alternative might be to \u2018buddy them up\u2019 \u2013 like my friends at the gym \u2013 and encourage them to review and repeat, at home, and by means of their phones, some of the speaking activities they\u2019ve done in class. In fact, you can design speaking activities for class work that prepare students for their cell phone chat later that evening. Good activities are role-playing interviews with sports stars or pop singers about, for example, their daily routine; role-playing a shopping encounter (e.g. where nothing is the right size or colour) or a job interview; playing guessing games (\u2018I\u2019m an animal: you have to guess what sort of animal I am by asking yes\/no questions), and so on.<\/p>\n Even five minutes of this is better than nothing and it costs them the price of a local phone call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There were two young Catalans at my gym who would while away their time on the exercise bicycles and rowing machines speaking English to each other. It was dreadful, highly accented and very unidiomatic English \u2013 but English, hours of it. What prompted them? And what sustained them in what was obviously harder work than … Continue reading Using English outside of class – Scott Thornbury<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":42,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-using-english-outside-class"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}