Applying Digital Tools in Pre-speaking Activities.

A speaking lesson includes pre-speaking, while-speaking, and post-speaking activities (Ngan, 2013) in which the pre-speaking stage is crucial. It prepares students for getting them to think about the topic or situation before they speak about it. Pre-speaking activities involve discussion or brainstorming, where students collect all their ideas on the topic; vocabulary preparation, where the teacher pre-teaches key vocabulary to help comprehension; prediction, where students guess what they may learn about. A number of pre-speaking activities such as constructing thought webs graphic organizers, a relevant reading, listening to a speaker, jotting down ideas, reflecting upon personal experience, and reviewing vocabulary necessary for the topic. Photographs, pictures, and cartoons are effective visual stimuli that teachers use as pre-speaking activities. Learners can plan their speech in terms of words, phrases, and ideas during the pre-speaking stage. The teacher should set up the pre-task and his/her clear instructions are needed (Ngan, 2013). The benefits of applying technology in English language teaching have been studied for a long time. Recently, Ulla et al. [12] pointed out that “various Internet-based applications encourage new teaching style and strategies, and more exciting and engaging activities, exercises, and positive impact on ELT to their students”. To inspire teachers to apply more digital tools, this workshop will recommend some useful and effective digital applications such as Jamboard, Mentimeter, Padlet, Quizizz, Kahoot, and Crossword labs in pre-speaking activities that support some lessons in the new textbooks.