What makes a speaking or writing activity truly successful? Why do some tasks spark lively discussion while others fall flat? Getting students to speak and write spontaneously is one of the greatest challenges in language teaching. This interactive workshop will equip you with practical strategies to design motivating speaking and writing tasks that promote collaboration and authentic communication in the classroom.

During this workshop, you will firstly define which lesson activities can be used to work on productive skills (speaking and writing). Together with the other participants, you will create and experiment with many activities that you can integrate in your own lessons. Furthermore, you will reflect on questions such as: How can a teacher provide useful guidance without taking centre stage? How can you give input that stimulates engagement, interaction, and healthy debate? How can you design speaking and writing activities to successfully achieve specific goals? And what could go wrong?

This workshop is for all language teachers, experienced or just starting out, who are looking for new ideas to engage their students. The workshop will be in English, but teachers of all languages are welcome.

Preparation

Required reading before this workshop:
Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching (2011). Chapter 9 Productive skills: speaking and writing.

The trainers

Alberto Colorado Garín is a Spanish teacher and coordinator of the Spanish department at Taalhuis Amsterdam. He has been teaching Spanish at Taalhuis Amsterdam for 12 years and is a certified DELE examinator. He is also an experienced teacher trainer at Taalhuis Amsterdam and Instituto Cervantes.
Johannes Kapteijn den Bouwmeester is a Dutch teacher at Taalhuis Amsterdam. He is also an experienced teacher trainer and responsible for guiding and supervising new Dutch teachers at Taalhuis Amsterdam.