Before moving on to the activities, there are some general considerations teachers should keep in mind when designing speaking activities. Harmer (2007) and Starkey (1988) believe that the choice of the right speaking activity influences students’ willingness to communicate, so teachers have to choose an interesting and engaging activity that gets the students to speak. For such discussions, teachers can choose between topic-based and task-based activities. In topic-based discussions, the participants must talk about a selected topic and the main focus of the activity is on the discussion process itself. The best topic-based activities require the students to talk about their personal experiences or about a controversy for or against which they can argue. However, task-based discussions are goal-oriented: they require the participants “to achieve an objective in the form of an observable result, such as brief notes or lists, a rearrangement of jumbled items, a drawing, a spoken summary” (Ur, 2012, p. 121). The most important requirement of the task is that the goal “should be achievable only by interaction between participants” (p. 121). As Ur (2012) observes, task-based activities work better than topic-based ones: “there is more talk, more balanced participation, more motivation and enjoyment” (p. 121), however, she admits that there are students who prefer topic-based discussions, mostly if the topic is challenging, engaging and deep. Another requirement is that the task must have a life-like and meaningful context: the goal is to get the students to use the language in a real form, not for the grade but for communication in everyday life (Gutiérrez Gutiérrez, 2005). Considering the grouping, teachers should strive to make students work in pairs and groups as often as possible. Not only does working in pairs and groups maximize student talking time (Ur, 2012) but as a collective endeavour where participants may need to work together to resolve conflicts and reach agreements, it also develops students’ social competences (Starkey, 1998, 2005). Pair work and group work both promote working independently from the teacher, sharing responsibility, and cooperating with other people (Harmer, 2007), which are all essential skills for successful global citizens. Before engaging in such speaking activities though, the teacher may need to consciously address conversation guidelines and the language of turn-taking and polite negotiation.

Discussions in the classroom can take many forms, however, and even in topic-based discussions, the structure seems to be an essential feature to grab students’ attention and help them engage. By giving students constraints and clear rules, teachers can level off distractions and keep the students on task. Going to the classroom and asking questions like ‘What do you think about global warming?’ or ‘What would you do about plastic pollution?’ may be counterproductive and would certainly not lead to fruitful discussions, given that without a clear focus and an interesting impetus, the students may get distracted, bored, or uninterested in the issue. Nevertheless, by giving the students an engaging stimulus, such as a song, a short video, an intriguing image or a thought-provoking text, and a structured activity, students will become more likely to engage in the lesson. In such organised discussions, students can express their views about different topics, and by listening to each other, they realize that there are multiple viewpoints, and they should hold their ideas loosely (OECD/Asia Society, 2018) or at least, be open to new ideas. To bring diverse opinions into a whole-class discussion, the think-pair-share strategy can be used as an example of organised discussions (Szesztay, 2020). In such a set-up, first, the student has to think about a question or topic individually, then, they are invited to discuss their ideas with a partner, and finally, they are supposed to share their ideas with the whole group. One of the advantages of this technique is that the students are given individual thinking time before they need to take a stand about a question, which may reduce anxiety and make students more confident in front of others. Darla Deardorff’s (2020) story circles technique is another example of a tool developed to this end. The teacher needs to divide the whole group into groups of 4-6 people. In each circle, everyone has to speak for 3 minutes and share a personal story (e.g., about the first time they became aware of the fact that there are differences between people based on skin colour, about a time they felt left out…etc.). The other participants need to listen to them actively and in another round, everyone has to say what they found memorable in the stories in 15 seconds. After that, the whole group shares their experiences and finally, each student reflects on the activity. The tool was developed together with UNESCO to propagate a methodology for developing intercultural competence; it is a low-preparation resource but highly adaptable. Giving roles to the group members (Selby & Pike, 1988; Szesztay, 2020) in a discussion may also increase participation and give more structure to a simple group discussion activity. Teachers can give students helpful roles (e.g., organiser, questioner, provoker) and unhelpful roles (e.g., chatterer, flatterer, extremist) and everyone needs to engage in the discussion complying with their role cards. By giving students roles they might not feel their own, teachers could help students maintain a reflective distance from their opinions and learn how to discuss important points politely. Also, after doing the activity, they could be asked to reflect on their roles and the roles they usually play in their everyday discussions. Structured debates (OECD/Asia Society, 2018) are a sub-type of organised discussions, where students need to form groups and either support or oppose controversial statements. As in this format, group creation may be randomized, the students might need to articulate views that are different from their own, thus they need to learn how to step into other people’s shoes and develop their perspective-taking skills.

Even in a safe environment, thinking about and expressing one’s opinion on controversial topics can be challenging first, and sometimes even if teachers act as facilitators and help students by asking questions, students either stay silent or withdraw and say, “I don’t know”. Activities, where they are kindly forced to take a stand and develop reasoned arguments, can help out in such situations. For instance, in an opinion line activity (Oxfam, 2018; Szesztay, 2020), the teacher reads out or writes up a controversial statement on the board and the students need to find their position on an imaginary opinion line, where the two ends of the spectrum represent strongly agree and strongly disagree. After finding where they stand kinaesthetically, they are also invited to express their opinions in words (either in front of the whole group or together with someone from the line). Four corners activities (Koshior, 2019) work very similarly, but in this case, the teacher needs to label the four corners of the room as strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree. After reading out the statement, the students have to go to the corner corresponding to their opinion and share their viewpoints with the other students. Common thinking frameworks can also help students organise and express their thoughts. As Woodward (2011) proposes, asking students to make a list (e.g., of the advantages and disadvantages of making elections compulsory or of arguments for or against the statement, “Women are paid less”) organises students’ thoughts and makes them think about other people’s opinions, not only their own. Ranking exercises are also useful tools to stimulate critical thinking and can be regarded as task-based activities. In a diamond ranking exercise (Brander et al., 2015; Oxfam, 2018), for example, students receive nine statements cards, and then they need to negotiate which statements are the most important, which two are the second most important and which three are of moderate importance, then which two are second least important and which one is the least important. The organising principle can be different (e.g., significance, interest, controversial nature), however, it makes students reach a consensus and when presenting their points to the whole class, express their opinions in front of others. Other activities of similar nature can be found in Brander et al. (2015), Council of Europe (2014), Oxfam (2018), Pike and Selby (1988).