*What elements make a speaking activity successful?
*Which tasks or activities really help build speaking fluency?
*What does the research show regarding speaking activities?
*What mistakes do ESL teachers often make in speaking activity design?
In this highly accessible and practical resource, Keith S. Folse provides a wealth of information to help ESL/EFL teachers design and use speaking tasks that will actually improve students' speaking fluency. The book presents and discusses the relevant research and assessment issues and includes case studies from twenty different settings and classrooms around the world so that readers learn from others about the problems and successes of using various speaking activities.
Teachers will find the chapters on Twenty Successful Activities and Ten Unsuccessful Activities particularly valuable. The successful activities are provided for classroom use and are reproducible. The book also contains five appendixes that explain what teachers need to know about vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar and how they affect the teaching of speaking. Samples of successful lesson plans and a list of resources useful for teaching speaking are also included.
Keith S. Folse, Ph.D., is Coordinator, TESOL Programs, University of Central Florida (Orlando). He is the author of "Vocabulary Myths" (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and more than 35 second language textbooks, including texts on grammar, reading, speaking, listening, and writing.

This workbook accompanies the Second Edition of Keys to Teaching Grammar to English Language Learners: A Practical Handbook by Keith S. Folse. The Workbook has been updated to reflect new content in the Second Edition of the Handbook and once again features exercises that carefully follow the sequence of material in the Handbook. To facilitate use of the Workbook with the Handbook, each exercise is coded with the corresponding pages for the material in the Handbook. Reflecting the different learning styles in any given class, the exercises practice identifying grammatical features in a variety of different ways, including many charts, matching activities, and short answer questions. In addition, the Workbook has a variety of exercises consisting of sentences typical of English language learners so that teachers can become familiar with specific types of errors that ESL students make with certain grammar points. The Workbook also features some action research projects to guide teachers in collecting small samples of data from their target student populations.

The "Four Point" series is designed for English language learners whose primary goal is to succeed in an academic setting.""The series covers the four academic skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking while providing reinforcement and systematic recycling of key vocabulary and further exposure to grammar issues. In order to participate in academic settings, ELLs need focused activities to develop and then maintain their use of vocabulary and grammar. Each book in the series focuses heavily on vocabulary in particular, highlighting between 125-150 key vocabulary items including individual words, compound words, phrasal verbs, short phrases, idioms, metaphors, collocations, and longer set lexical phrases. Each unit in "Reading-Writing 1, "includes two reading passages on the same topic within a field of academic study: Psychology, World Civilizations, Astronomy, Literature, Civil Engineering, and Political Science. Each reading is accompanied by a before reading, during reading, and after reading strategy and practice activity. The goal is to provide students with a variety of strategies/tools to master whatever academic texts they may encounter. In addition, exercises have been designed to develop vocabulary, paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing skills. By addressing the breadth and depth of reading and writing tasks required in academic settings instead of only reading for pleasure or writing for research projects, this volume truly prepares students for the variety of reading texts and writing projects they will be assigned in colleges and universities.Interactive vocabulary activities are available on the book's companion website.