While some students who ask for, pay for or seem to prefer “free conversation” classes might be happy with just that, there are many reasons why the teacher might actually want to add things like more language input and/ or controlled practice to such classes. Possible motivations include:
- the student’s desire for free con being based on a false idea of what it can achieve
- the student making little progress (and probably leaving once they consciously or subconsciously realise that)
- the student being unable to sustain free conversation
- the student needing more variety than yet another 40 minutes of chatting
- someone (the school, who is paying for the course, a teacher trainer, etc) demanding something more systematic
Ways of providing more actual teaching without abandoning the idea of free con include:
- Questions from the teacher which will probably be misunderstood or elicit a need for particular language (e.g. “Do you have any plans for this weekend?” to bring up differences between future tenses or questions about local festivals to elicit “which is a kind of…”)
- Correction of their errors then a related language presentation, such as correcting “wifes X” then presenting other irregular plural nouns (or at least recommendations on where they can find such info after class)
- Improving their answers in other ways (writing their answer on the board and suggesting words that could be changed or added to make the meaning more specific and interesting, writing one of their sentences up and drilling intonation that makes them sound more interested, etc)
- Materials whose main purpose seems to be prompting conversation but which also have useful language to learn, such as common small talk questions, important functional language for discussions, some topic-specific vocabulary, or examples of typical errors to avoid
- Getting students to read or listen to something on a topic that they will talk about in class
- Chatting about using English in class, including suggesting self-study tips, sources of good language, etc
- Making the chat more like a real-life English small talk conversation (by encouraging the student to answer then ask related questions back, teaching conversational reactions like “No way!”, roleplaying a similar conversation but with the teacher pretending to be someone the student needs to talk to outside class, etc)
- Giving students something to do outside class (writing about a topic which you talked about, preparing a topic for the next lesson, trying one of the self-study tips that you discussed to report back on in the next class, writing down questions about the language they encounter or need during the week to ask in the next class, some online controlled practice of a language point they had difficulty with, etc)
- Doing another needs analysis/ a needs analysis update (in case their situation has changed or their progress in some areas have left other parts of their English behind)
- Checking and giving feedback on how well they are progressing (by doing a speaking test from an exam like IELTS, by asking them how they think they are progressing and what they most need to improve on, by comparing to what was written during a similar progress check a few months earlier, by setting a level check for homework, etc)
The last two tips on focussing on progress are also good ways of persuading students that a more systematic and/ or varied approach is better than just pure free con.