While written exercises may serve students adequately on tests, the structures they emphasize can remain elusive or difficult for students to master in conversation. Students tend to interpret their difficulty in applying what they have learned as a lack of language ability, and they can quickly lose confidence when speaking. Producing a target…

A number of devices for use in teaching foreign language conservation courses are described. Among them are hypothetical situations, group discussions, activities for improving oral comprehension, plays and skits, collective stories, dialogues, interviews, speeches, recorded songs, cartoon captions, television games, and card techniques. (RM)

A number of conversation exercises are described for use in second language teaching which are intended to promote communication in the foreign language by creating among the students a need to talk and a need to listen. (RM)

Describes an activity for use in the conversational English-as-a-foreign-language classroom. The activity involves having each student say one or two sentences that continues a story being made up as the activity goes along. Students were positive about the activity, because saying only one or two sentences helped them not to feel pressured or…

Describes a "preliminary" course for English as a foreign language in Grades 5-6, including games and situational conversations. An outline is given, ordered on the basis of increasing difficulty. Hints are given for extending the repertoire of games. Finally, the value of written texts is discussed. (IFA/WGA)

This article discusses the advantages and ways of using the Monopoly game in Russian language conversation courses in American schools. Procedures for developing a Russian language version of the game are outlined. (CLK)

Finds that motivation in the conversation course is fostered by careful selection of discussion material, narrow in scope and interesting to students rather than to teachers. Games, songs and experiments are desirable. Error correction is discussed, particularly of "Germanisms". It is suggested that sociolinguistics can contribute to motivation.…

Presents an approach for developing oral proficiency in the advanced conversation course that proposes, as an organizing principle, the use of Swales's concept of genre as a class of communicative events that share a communicative purpose. It is concluded that focus on genre can improve proficiency performance and articulation. (eight references)…

This article maintains that a conversational language course which uses audiovisual aids, and which includes games, debates, songs and group activities, is the best and quickest way for French science students to learn English that they need professionally. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This handbook, concerning the Ewe language and culture of Togo, presents classroom activities that require the learner to exchange messages in a way that is appropriate to the cultural context. These activities are presented in 30 lessons containing both basic and supplementary material that deal with situations and topics which will be useful to…

Four short articles discuss how to transcribe voice messages quickly and easily, how to learn to debate, new French expressions and games for language students. (Text is in French.) (MLA)

Data are presented to illustrate how confirmation and comprehension checks and clarification requests develops second-language skills (comprehension and production). Absence of these interactional features in the classroom reflects the unequal participant relationships which are shaped by classroom activities. Two activities (in appendix) were…

The comic book is discussed as an aid to improving English conversational ability in preadolescents and teenagers. A description of some of the characteristics of conversational English, such as contractions, stereotyped phrases, and conversational fillers, should precede the presentation of data from comic books. Classroom techniques suggested…

Presents guidelines for making individual cassette recordings for student homework from tape masters accompanying foreign language texts. Strategies for using and supplementing curricular material are also discussed. (LMO)

Conversation cards are a basis for guided role play and are used for reviewing a foreign language unit. After two or more units, conversation cards are combined into extended conversations (conversations libres). Two detailed examples are given of conversations libres and some sample conversation cards are appended. (LMO)