Communicative Skills in the ESL Classroom

You can teach students all the vocabulary in the world, and they could read and write just like native speakers. However, if they are unable to converse face-to-face as well as through writing, their skills will let them down. Competence in the areas of speaking and listening are essential to anyone who wishes to be able to offer English fluently when they enter the world of work, but also for those who wish to access the vast amount of cultural opportunities linked to knowing the language inside out.


Continue reading for five ways in which you can support your students to build their communicative skills in the ESL classroom from a young age.

1.   Role Play

Role play is something that some teachers can feel a little uncomfortable with unless they teach the younger students. However, it is definitely an approach that has a lot to offer children of all ages. This fast food restaurant role play set contains a wealth of resources, including store signs, menu boards, name tags, order checklists and much more. Simply dedicate an area of your room to creating this fake restaurant. You may even find that local ones will offer you authentic packaging, for example, to add to the experience for your students. Encourage them to spend time in the area, practising speaking English in the context of a fast food restaurant. It could be liaising with a customer taking their order or speaking to a fellow colleague and instructing them as to what to do next.

2.     Label the Pictures

This Label the Pictures pack linked to homes is a fantastic way of encouraging dialogue in a much less forced way. While children are cutting out the labels for different parts of a house and them sticking them down, they can be chatting to each other about what they are doing. Of course, it is essential to encourage the use of English, wherever possible, but even just practising pronouncing the vocabulary is useful. As well as external features, internal ones within specific rooms are covered. Therefore, students can use their own experiences of their homes to start a discussion with their classmates.

3.       Asking and Answering Questions

As a learner of a foreign language, when we get asked a question, we often freeze and find ourselves tongue-tied. Practising both asking and answering questions regularly, in a variety of contexts, is imperative to continued progression. These Describe a Scene mats are fantastic for doing just that linked to the topic of homes. Provide students with a scene mat to share, and one person should have the list of questions and pick one to ask. Encourage answers in full sentences. Then the children swap roles. For more advanced students, you could expect them to come up with their own questions.

4.       Cut Paste Learn – Parts of Speech

Knowing the difference between nouns, adjectives and verbs is a crucial part of ESL learning. This cut paste learn pack linked to homes offers the opportunity to practise this in a fun way. Students simply read the words and colour them according to which part of speech they are. All the nouns will go together to create a nouns house, for example. This works well as a collaborative exercise where two students pair up to discuss the words, using them within sentences, challenging each other if they feel they do not make sense.

5.       Would You Rather...?

‘Would you rather...’ questions are fun, whatever your age. This pack, filled with questions linked to a variety of topics, is the perfect way of practising giving your opinion. Although your students are expected to write down their preference and justify it, the best writers formulate their ideas verbally first. Therefore, you could encourage students to work in pairs and orally rehearse their sentences prior to writing them down. 

Learning a second language or a foreign language involves communication, presentation, and expression which can help to nurture the development of communicative skills. It is essential that teachers in the ESL classroom be aware of the various ways they can engage their students and facilitate learning in different contexts. By encouraging communication, using creative activities, giving feedback, and helping students take responsibility for their own language learning, teachers can create a space for meaningful learning in the ESL classroom.

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