Using a BookWidgets activity to make speaking fun

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February 22, 2017

Apparently it’s good to share and in that spirit I’d like to share with you an app that I’ve used to make a speaking practice activity more fun for the students. The aim of speaking practice in question, was to practice IELTS Part 2, the long turn.

task 1

The topic is standard fare for part 2 of the IELTS test and required the students to speak about a well-known person. In previous classes I had only focused on adjectives to describe people. However, I decided to try to make the activity a little more engaging by starting with a game.

The game involved students using BookWidgets to do series of simple jigsaws of well-known people. Fun, engaging and it provided an opportunity to elicit some relevant vocabulary prior to the speaking task.

Below are a few examples. Have a go, if you don’t know who the people are, ask a student!

app1 https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/8BYSEY