English Speaking Practice, Roleplaying, and the Problem of Speech Anxiety

Most ESL students that I’ve worked with start conversations with me during our consultation with “I need to improve my English speaking,” and then proceed to explain in detail and with complete coherence their issues at work that require them to speak better English. It is a strange situation when people whose language fluency is impressively good reach out for tutoring because they perceive their fluency to be poor. 

Speech requires confidence, so students should practice building confidence by putting themselves regularly into challenging speaking scenarios. During tutoring sessions, I try and create such scenarios. Here are a few speaking roleplay ideas to play during tutoring sessions:  

Here are some scenario ideas:

• Fear of talking to strangers → you are approaching a stranger at a bus stop, your goal is to engage them in conversation; the stranger will be dismissive 

• Fear of speaking to authorities → you are the victim of a crime, and you need to speak to a police officer to get assistance, you see one near your home and you have to approach them and explain the situation to them. 

• Difficulties speaking at length → you have to give a presentation of 5 minutes in length discussing any topic in detail; you don’t get to use audiovisual supporting materials. You can engage the audience while you do it. 

• Difficulties in producing humor → you have to do a brief standup comedy routine for a few minutes. Come up with a joke (or borrow from a popular comedian) and deliver it. 

These are roleplay scenarios that challenge different learners, and I provide feedback about a client’s proficiency with them (positive and negative). Then I try to encourage them to try again either during the same session or the next one.

For homework, whenever possible, I ask them to go out into the world and find real people to speak to with these goals in mind (in appropriate ways). 

You build speech confidence by speaking to different people every day in different contexts with different goals.