NCTE 2024

Speaking is arguably the most valuable language skill and contemporary approaches in English language teaching emphasize the importance of maximizing student talking time in class. Having sufficient time to practice any skill is important, but simply providing speaking opportunities in your lesson without adequate instruction, scaffolding, task design, and assessment is unlikely to result in the quality of language development students need to deal with the challenges of real world communication. In this hands-on workshop we will consider factors that underlie the skill of spoken interaction, explore a framework for developing spoken interaction tasks, and follow the Backward Design model to design speaking lessons and assessment strategies in alignment with curricular content. Participants in this session will leave with practical ideas on how they can align their planning, teaching, and assessment practices in order to help students become more competent communicators.