Using IELTS Speaking Part 2 Topics for Communicative Follow Ups

(TESOL Ideas--Communicative Follow Ups, IELTS Speaking Part 2)

sample: docs, pub

Another idea for Communicative Follow Ups is to turn the topic of the reading/listening into an IELTS Speaking Part 2 topic.  
On the IELTS Speaking Test, students are given a topic, and have to talk about it for one to two minutes.

To turn this into a communicative follow up, you can just take the general topic of the reading or listening, make it into a speaking card, and instruct the students to talk about it to a partner for 1 to 2 minutes.

For example, I was recently teaching a listening lesson in which the students had to listen to a woman recount her experience with a lion while on Safari (Reflect Listening & Speaking 5, Unit 1, Listening 2: A Night Alone with the Lions p.10-14).  As a communicative follow up, I had the students do a speaking task in which they talked about a time they were scared of an animal:

Describe a time that when you were scared of an animal:

You should say:

• what happened

• where you were then

• who was with you

I even found sample Youtube videos of people practicing the same topic.  I was able to show this video to my students as an example before they did the task themselves.

Part 2 Sample Answer Being Scared by an Animal

Granted, it was a bit of luck to find pre-existing material on the exact topic that I was looking for.  But there is so much IELTS preparatory stuff online already that it's not unlikely that you can find pre-existing material on whatever topic you are looking for.

And if you can't find it, you can just make up an IELTS Speaking card yourself.  

This type of communicative follow up obviously works particularly well in contexts where students are already focused on IELTS preparation.  (e.g. Here in Vietnam, where I work, IELTS is the dominant English proficiency test, so most Vietnamese will have to take the IELTS sooner or later, regardless of whatever program they are currently studying in.)

But even if your students aren't studying IELTS, you can still do this activity.  Just sell it to them as "speaking practice" rather than "IELTS practice".