Commentary on activities
The most obvious point is that you cannot please all the people all the time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, different students like different things, so the key is variety, both with the same class and from class to class. Some students like games, others enjoy video work, others prefer debates (quite a number in this last category; debates and discussions are possibly more popular with final years, who have a more advanced command of the language).
A relaxed atmosphere is generally considered conducive to more fluent speaking - fun, friendly, amusing are the key words that are repeated. Pair and group work is popular, although several students seem to enjoy whole-class discussions. The topics must be real, up-to-the-minute, on themes that students feel qualified to comment on.
Note the comment about making daft mistakes - here's a student who isn't aware of how natural it is to make more mistakes in oral language, and of how different this is from the high standards of accuracy required in written work. For what to suggest to student 6, worried about her clumsy mental translation, see section 6.4.3. NB also see student 16 - the perception that the class should measure not develop speaking skills.
The features include: relatively simple clause structures; clauses following on with no explicit statement of the relationship between the two ('writing for flora of Turkey', 'they haven't got the scientists'); incomplete sentences; non-specific words and phrases ('they', 'it', 'the others', 'sort of', 'somehow', etc); use of interactive expressions ('well', 'uhuh'); less densely packed information; few complex noun groups - one piece of information added at a time (Brown and Yule, 1983b: 5-7).
