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MINGLING GAME FOR SPEAKING PRACTICE

M. Samsuli Akbar

Introduction

Speaking defines as a productive skill that involves using speech to

express meaning to othe people (Spratt: 2005). Burns and Joyce (1994:14)
supported that speaking is an active process of negotiating meaning and using
social knowledge of the situation and the topic to the other people. It means that
speaking is defined as a process of building and sharing meaning through the use
of verbal and non-verbal symbols, requires students to have communicative skills,
so that the goal of teaching speaking should be directed to improve students’
communicative skills in order to be able to express themselves and learn how to
use a language. However, many problems faced by both the teachers and the
students in teaching and learning English speaking process.

In teaching English speaking, many language teachers have the frustrating

experience that they invest lots of energy in teaching speaking. They often feel
simultaneously as if they are invisible or performing without any audience. The
teacher usually feel tired because all of the interpretations and conclusions are on
the teacher without any participation from the students. The students sitpassively
in the classroom and only do what the teacher asks or does nothing. This problem
may be happened due to to the fact that th eteachers are lack of ability to design
effective interaction strategies. Providing effective interaction strategies for
communication is an essential factor needed by students so that they are able to
direct the dialogue with one another, comment immediately on what another
speaker has just said, and disagree with or challenge another speaker’s statement.
They should not have to be invited to speak or speak when there is a short silence
indicating the end of someone else’s turn, interrupt one another to include an
opinion or question, and finally use appropriate paralinguistic features (Counihan,
1998). Ballard in Yan-hua (2007:25) claimed that the learners need to change
their leaning strategies to meet the requirements of the new academic culture.
Furthermore, Lam & Wong (2000:245), in their study, they concluded that
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learners should also exhibit appropriate cooperative behaviour and peer support to
compensate for the ineffective use of interaction strategies due to limited language
proficiency.

The problems may also come from both the proficiency and the
behaviours of the students. According to Heny & Yohana (2005:195), student's
inability in using spoken English caused by some reasons. They are might be
partly because the nature of speaking is different from writing in which we can
edit and revise what we write, or reading in which we can reread parts that we do
not understand. Those problems may also exist because the students themselves
are reluctant to practice English because of the flowing aspect : (1) lack of
vocabulary; (2) lack of self confidence; (3) difficult to take part in discussion ; (4)
uncomfortable with the groups. Such behavior very often stems from common
reason: they are inattentive and not motivated. Anderman & Anderman (2003:
166) explained that students’ motivation can negatively lead to the use of avoidant
and in appropriate strategies, and affect students behavior. According to them,
students who engage in avoidance behavior try to avoid some perceived threats in
the learning context . Allyn & Bacon (1992) listed some problems faced by the
students, namely; (1) cultural problem; (2)lack of motivation; (3) lack of
confidence; (4) peer pressure; and (5) lack of support such as the classroom
atmoshphere and linguistic support are not provided. Furthermore, Qashoa
(2006:3) said that the lack of motivation among the learners not only frustates
them, but also frustates the teachers who are the cornerstone of the educational
process.

The existence of English in Indonesia as a foreign language becomes

another steep obstacle for the teachers to enable students to use English
communicatively since it is not used in real daily conversation but it is only used
at certain places, e.g. at schools and certain work places.

Being aware of the students problems in learning speaking, a relevant and

an effective activity should be set in order to develop speaking skill of the
students. In tis case, mingling techniqueis proposed to help the English teachers
in teaching speaking.
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Mingling is defined as an activity in which students move around and talk

to each other to get some information needed. These activities are often designed
to practise question asking and answering (Yates: 2008).

Related to language teaching, Mingling activity is an activity in which

students stand up and walk around asking questions to match students to
information they have been given on their cards or handouts. It is one of the most
popular TEFL activities as it is a good excuse to get students up and moving
around, and so loosens their inhibitions and wakes them up. In mingling activity,
the students should wander around the classroom then mingling with their
classmates by finding a partner they have not worked with, ask their questions of
each other and record the answers they get. They usually carry out this mingling
activities until students have had a chance to talk to some students.

The Teaching of Speaking

According to Hornby (1995: 37) teaching means giving the instruction to

(a person): give a person (knowledge skill, etc). While speaking means to make
use of words in an ordinary voice. So, teaching speaking is giving instruction to a
person in order to communicate.

In teaching speaking, many aspects have to be considered, since,

according to Burns and Joyce (1999:3), its form and meaning are depend on the
context in which it occurs, including the participants (the speakers) themselves,
their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes of
speaking. When someone speaks , he/she is both using language to carry out
various social functions and choosing forms of language which relate in a relevant
way to the cultural and social context.

Pattison in Nunan (1989) contrasts what conventionally happens in the

language class with what typically happens outside the classroom in relation to the
content, reason, result, participants and means of communication. The contrasts
are as follows:
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COMMUNICATION OUTSIDE
PRACTICE IN THE CLASSROOM
THE CLASSROOM
Content of communication
Content or topic is decided by teacher, Speakers express their own ideas,
textbook, tape, etc. The meaning of whises, opinions, attitudes,
what they say may not always be clear information, etc. They are fully aware
to the speakers. The content is highly of the meaning they wish to convey.
predictable The exact content of any speaker’s
message in un predictable.
Reason for communication
Learners speak in order to practice Speakers have asocial or personal
speaking; because teacher tells them to; reason to speak. There is an
in order to get a good mark, etc. information gap to be filled, or an area
of uncertainty to be made clear. What
is said is potentially interesting or
useful to the participants
Result of communication
The EFL spoken; the teacher accepts or Speakers schieve their aims; they get
corrects what is said; a mark is given, what they wanted, an information gap
etc. (extrinsic motivation). is filled, a problem is solved, a dicision
is reached or a social contact is made,
etc. The result is of intrinsic interest or
value to the participants.
Partcipants in communication
A large group in which not everyone is Two or more people are usually facing
facing the speakers or interested in each other, paying attention and
what they say; except for one person, respondingto what is said, rather than
the teacher, who pays less attention to to how correctly is said.
what they say then to how correctly
they say it.
Means of communication
Language from teacher or tape is very Native-speakers output is not closely
closly adapted to to learners’ level. All adjusted to foreigners’ level. Meaning
speech is accurate is possible, and is conveyed by any means at the
usually in complete sentences. speakers’ command: linguistic or para-
Problems in communicating meaning linguistic (gestures, etc). Problems are
are often deal with by translation. dela withnegoitation and exchange of
Learners are corrected if their speech feedback between speakers.
deviates from standard forms, whether Translation is not always possible.
or not their meaning is clear. Teacher Errors not effecting communication are
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help learners to express themselves largely ignored. Native speakers help

more correctly. foreign speakers to express themselves
more clearly.

Therefore, Burns and Joyce (1999) suggest that the English teachers need
to find the background data about the students’ needs and goals before teaching
speaking skills. This involves gathering personal data, such as age, language
background, and information about the students’ goal and needs. It also involves
assessing their current level of spoken language competency and proficiency.

Having analyzed the students’ need and the current level of their spoken
competence, teachers needs to design teaching-learning sequences which can help
and develop students’ ability to use oral language. According to Brown
(2007:331-332), there are seven principles for teaching speaking skills. They are:

1. Focus on both fluency and acuuracy, depending on the objective;

2. Provide intrinsically motivating techniques;

3. Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts;

4. Provide appropriate feedback and correction;

5. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening;

6. Give students opportunities to imitate oral communication; and

7. Encourage the development of speaking strategies.

Besides, ESL teachers should provide opportunities for students to talk.

It is important forn us as language teachers to be aware of how much we are

talking in class so we don’t take up all the time the students could be talking. One
further interesting point is that when the teacher is removed from the
conversation, that learners take on divers speaking roles that are normally filled
by the teacher (such as posing questions or offering clarification).

Furthermore, designing classroom activities that involve guidance and

practice in both transactional and interactional speaking are also needed. When we
talk with someone outside the classroom, we usually do so for interactional or
transactional purposes. It includes both establishing and maintaining social
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relationships. Transactional speech involves communicating to get something

done, including the exchange of good and/or services.

From the explanation above, teaching speaking skills is a complicated task

for the teachers. The most important thing is how to guide and help the students to
be able to communicate well, since sometimes spoken language is easy to
perform, but in some cases it is difficult (Brown, 2001: 270). In order that they
can carry out the successful speaking, they have to fulfill some characteristics of
successful speaking activity such as:

1. Learners talk a lot. As much as possible of the period of time allocated to the
activity is in fact occupied by learners talk. This may be obvious, but often
most time is taken up with teacher talk or pauses.

2. Participant is even. Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of

talk active participants. All get a chance to speak and contributions are fairly
evenly distributed.

3. Motivation is high. Learners are eager to speak because they are interested in
the topic and have something new to say about it, or they want to contribute to
achieve a task objective.

4. Language is of an acceptable level. Learners express themselves in utterances

that are relevant, easy comprehensible to teach other and of acceptable level of
language accuracy

By and large, letting students interact in communicative speaking activity

will be meaningful in teaching speaking skill. ESL teachers should create a
classroom environment where students have real life communication, authentic
activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language (kayi, 2006:1). To
provide meanigful activity, communicative approach serve best for this aim.

Communicative Approachin English Language Teaching

In the early 70's a new approach was developed to focus more on student
production based on a different theory of language acquisition. The theory behind
this is that students want to communicate and that dialogues should be based on
real life situations. (Steinburg, 2001) The material used should be authentic and
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meaningful. It is also believed that in order to communicate in the target language

the speaker should have more than just linguistic competence but also
communicative competence (Larsen-Freeman, 2001). This theory produced the
approach that we know today as Communicative Language Teaching.

Communicative language teaching (CLT) is generally regarded as an

approach to language teaching (Richards and Rodgers 2001). As such, CLT
reflects a certain model or research paradigm, or a theory (Celce-Murcia 2001). It
is based on the theory that the primary function of language use is
communication. Its primary goal is to develop communicative competence of the
learners (Hymes 1971), or simply put, communicative ability. In other words, its
goal is to make use of real-life situations that necessitate communication.

Communicative competence is defined as the ability to interpret and enact

appropriate social behaviors, and it requires the active involvement of the learner
in the production of the target language (Canale and Swain1980; Celce-Murcia et
al. 1995; Hymes 1972). Such a notion encompasses a wide range of abilities: the
knowledge of grammar and vocabulary (linguistic competence); the ability to say
the appropriate thing in a certain social situation (sociolinguistic competence); the
ability to start, enter, contribute to, and end a conversation, and the ability to do
this in a consistent and coherent manner (discourse competence); the ability to
communicate effectively and repair problems caused by communication
breakdowns (strategic competence).

Now many linguistics and EFL teachers agree on that students learn to
speak in the foreign language by “interacting”. Communicative language is
considered as an effective way in teaching speaking. Communicative language
teaching is based on real-life situations that require communication. By using this
method in EFL classes, students will have the opportunity of communicating with
each other in the target language. In brief, EFL teachers should create a
classroom environment where students have real-life communication, authentic
activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language. This can occur when
the teacher provides communicative activities to achieve a goal or to complete a
task.
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Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that

necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely
to encounter in real life. Unlike the audiolingual method of language teaching,
which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave
students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary
according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from
day to day. Students' motivation tolearn comes from their desire to communicate
in meaningful ways about meaningful topics.

There are basically five characteristics that make CLT different from other
approaches like Audio-Lingual Method or traditional approaches like Grammar-
Translation Method(Nunan, 1991).They are as follows:
1. Taught in the target language;
2. Introduction of authentic text and materials in the lesson. An emphasis on
learning to communicate through interaction with other students;
3. Opportunities for learners to focus, not only on the target language, but also
on the learning process itself;
4. Learner's experiences are an important part of the classroom learning
situation;
5. An attempt to link learning in the classroom to authentic usage outside the
classroom.

Furthermore, Harmer (2001: 86) lists a taxonomy of the characteristics of

communicative language learning as follow;

1. Learners learn through communicating in the target language rather than overt
teaching of atomised particles of the language.

2. Authentic texts are used.

3. Activities are done for reasons of meaning rather than form.

4. Interaction is meaning focussed rather than form focussed.

5. Comprehensible communicative competence is the aim: activities are aimed at

fluency rather than accuracy and by extension, over learning.
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6. Feedback given by the teacher is related to the communication information

gap and not to the language point in question. That is, meaning is paramount.
Language is presented subtly.

7. Learners are given opportunities to focus on the learning process as well as the
language items.

8. An attempt is made to link classroom learning with language use outside the
classroom. Target language is properly contextualised.

9. Communication starts immediately, rather than after long periods of grammar,

vocabulary or drills.

10. Sequencing of presentation is dictated by function or need and not linguistic

complexity.

11. Communicative competence is reached through trail and error – mistakes are
considered a part of the learning process.

In communicative approach, the teaching must be purposeful. Students

must be in a situation in their learning and activities where they need to
communicate with each other in order to accomplish their task in the activity. This
will also allow them to use each other as resources and learn from each other. Use
will not be unlike what their situations could be in real life. In real life they will
learn through practice in using the language in a purposeful way. They will also
learn from their experience through interacting with other English speakers. In
having freedom and unpredictability in the classroom students have the freedom
to make their own choices in using the target language. Often, when traditional
teachers do interactive activities they allow students to only to use specific
answers, for example either affirmative or negative response to a specific
statement or question. Allowing unpredictability the activity becomes more
interesting and challenging and much more like real life. The activities do not
have to be acting out a real life situation but can also be light and fun like a game.
This could appeal to adult learners as well as young ones. There many choices the
teacher can make in selecting activities for use in the classroom.
Some examples of communicative activities the teacher can use:
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Communicative Activities to Promote Speaking

There are some activities to promote speaking (Kayi, 2006: 2) as follows:

1. Discussion

The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about anevent, or
find solutions in their discussion groups. Here the teacher canform groups of
students and each group works on their topic for a giventime period, and
present their opinions to the class. This activity fosters critical thinking and
quick decision making, and students learn how toexpress and justify
themselves in polite ways while disagreeing with the others. Fauziati
(2002:134) states that the main aim of group discussionis to improve fluency,
grammar in probably best allowed to function as anaturally communicative
context.

2. Role Play and Simulation

Role play has appeal for students because it allows the students to becreative
and to put themselves in another person’s place for a while(Richard, 2003:
222). While simulation is very similar to role-play buthere students can bring
items to the class to create a realistic environment.For instance, if a student is
acting as a singer, he or she can bring amicrophone to sing and so on.

3. Interviews

Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to practicetheir

speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps thembecoming
socialized. After interviews, each student can present the resultto the class.

4. Reporting

In class, the students are asked to report what they find as the mostinteresting
news. Students can also talk about whether they haveexperienced anything
worth telling their friends in their daily lives beforeclass.

5. Prepared Talks

A popular kind of activity is the prepared talk where a student makes

apresentation on a topic. Such talks are not designed for informalspontaneous
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conversation; because they are prepared, they are more‘writing-like’ than

spoken orally. However, if possible, students shouldspeak from notes rather
than from a script (Harmer, 2001: 274)

6. Dialogue

Dialogue is one of the media in teaching speaking. It helps the studentspractice

in speech, pronunciation, intonation, stress. The primaryobjective of using
dialogue is developing student’s competence(pronunciation, intonation, stress)
in teaching speaking like nativespeaker. Therefore, in teaching learning uses
dialogue (short and long),the students are motivated by the teachers question to
reason rather thanto recollect. Dialogues is two sides communication, it means
we just nothave to express something but we should have to understand what
anotherpeoples said (Podo and Sulaiman, 1995: 25).

7. Information Gap.

In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will
have the information that other partner does not have and the partners will
share their information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as
solving a problem or collecting information. Also, each partner plays an
important role because the task cannot be completed if the partners do not
provide the information the others need. These activities are effective because
everybody has the opportunity to talk extensively in the target language.

8. Storytelling

Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody
beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story
telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the
format of beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and
setting a story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance,
at the very beginning of each class session, the teacher may call a few students
to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way, not only will the teacher
address students’ speaking ability, but also get the attention of the class.
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9. Story Completion

This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activities for which

students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but
after a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to
narrate from the point where the previous one stopped. Each student is
supposed to add from four to ten sentences. Students can add new characters,
events, descriptions and so on.

10. Sharing

A great deal of motivating language practice can be generated by asking

students to talk about themselves, to share their private store of experience
with one another, providing they have a framework in which to do so. The
framework, especially in the early stages, should limit the exchanges to quite
simple factual information. Such exchanges constitute a natural information
gap activity in which all students are able to participate.

11. Task-completion activities:

student conducted surveys, interviews and searches in which students were

required to use their linguistic resources to collect information.

Mingling Technique

The classroom oral activities are roughly devided into two types: fluency
activities and accuracy activities. If it is an accuracy activity, the focus is usually
structure and the activity is controlled, for example a drill. In these activities, there
is a definite, correct answer or response. It is all about the correct answer and the
interaction is almost entirely student –teacher/teacher-student. It wasn’t that long
ago that such activities formed the overwhelming majority of classroom oral work
(the audio-lingual approach).These activities have little to do with
communication. They are about form and structure. That is not to say they are
useless. They still have a place in the language classroom. (Hopefully, however, a
significantly smaller place than was previously the case).
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Fluency activities, on the other hand, are concerned with developing

learners’ communication skills and the interaction can be student-student and
student-teacher. Fluency activities frequently do not involve finding a correct
answer. They focus on the process rather than the product. How you get there is
more important than what you find when you get there. They are about doing the
activity, not finding the correct answer.

Differences between activities that focus on fluency and those that focus
on accuracy can be summarized as follows:

Activities Focusing on accuracy Activities Focusing on Fluency

a. Reflect classroom use of language a. Reflect natural use of language

b. Focus on the formation of correct
examples of language
c. Practice language out of context
d. Practice small samples of language
e. Do not require meaningful
communication
f. Choice of language is controlled
b. Focus on achieving
c. Require meaningful use of language
d. Produce language that may not be
predictable
e. Seek to link language language use
to context

One of the goal of CLT is to develop fluency in language use occuring

when a speaker engages in meaningful interaction and maintains comprehensible
and ongoing communication despite limitations in his or her communicative
competence. In this case, the use of mingling technique for some communicative
activities will provide speaking fluency.

Mingling is an activity in which students move around and talk to each

other to get some information needed. These activities are often designed to
practise question asking and answering (Yates:2008).

It is one of the most popular TEFL activities as it is a good excuse to get

students up and moving around, and so loosens their inhibitions and wakes them
up. The assumption is that this activity is able to encourage interaction amongst
students. Mingling can motivate students and give more chances to speak freely
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and to share ideas in improving their speaking skill and to show their ability. Most
important, the students will really enjoy the activity. Once they get going, the
teacher do not need to have to prod them. A party atmosphere takes over as
students move around trying out their new found language skills. So, their
motivation will arise since in the mingling activity the academic activities provide
a nature of academic task and amount of autonomy of the student (Anderman:
2003). Besides that, it also fosters a truly communicative and student-centered
approach to learning.

In mingling activity, the students should wander around the classroom

then mingling with their classmates by finding a partner they have not worked
with, ask their questions of each other and record the answers they get. They
usually carry out this mingling activities until students have had a chance to talk
to some students. Mingling activities require students to tell each other what they
really think about a given topic. By answering a questionnaire or asking and
answering questions on cards, the students get the opportunity to say what they
really think about something, to discuss a topic in depth and to express their
emotions. The teacher may need to pre-teach certain vocabulary items and/or a
specific structure, but once the activity begins, it is up to the students to express
themselves.

Case (2008) lists 15 variations of mingling techniques to play “Find

Someone Who” games in which students stand up and walk around asking
questions to match people to information they have been given, is one of the most
popular TEFL games as it is a good excuse to get students up and moving around,
and so loosens their inhibitions and wakes them up. It can be difficult to organize,
though, especially making sure that everyone is equally involved and that
everyone finishes at more or less the same time. By using the variations below,
the teacher can both avoid those problems and keep the game new for the students
each time you use it:

1. I’m unique
Students have to find out something that is true only of themselves in the class,
e.g. an ability only they have (“can”). They go round asking the same question
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(e.g. “Have you eaten crocodile?”) until they have asked everyone. If at any
time they find out that it is also true of someone else, they should quickly think
of another thing and start again.

2. I’m the same too

In this case, students stand up and try to find people who have things in
common with them, e.g. the same number of sisters. As in most of these
variations, it is important that they change partner after just one question. This
is good for auxiliary verbs practice (So do I etc.).

3. I’m the same too Two

In this slight variation on I’m the Same Too, students can’t move onto another
partner until they have found one thing they have in common with the person
they are talking to. Every time they change partners they have to ask different
questions- they can’t get one point for “We are both Spanish” each time!

4. I’m the same too Three

In this case, students have to find things that they have in common with the
other students with a different short answer each time, one “So do I”, one “So
am I”, one “So can I” etc.

5. Guess and find

Before students stand up and start asking questions, they have predict what will
be true, e.g. how many people each of the statements on their worksheet
something is true for (“_____________ people can play the guitar” or “5
people can _______________”)

6. Find what I’ve written

Each student writes one or more true statements about themselves on slips of
paper. The slips of paper are then taken in and distributed so that people have
statements about others. Students stand up and race to find the people who
wrote those things (or anyone else the same thing is true for).
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7. The snowball game

This is a variation on “Find what I’ve written”. When students have written
their true sentences, they screw them up into balls and when the teacher says
start throwing them around like snowballs, including pick up other people’s
“snowballs” and throw them. After one minute, students pick up snowballs
close to them and go around trying to find who each statement is true for.

8. Find the question find someone who

In this variation of Find What I’ve Written, students only write a very short and
vague piece of information about themselves, e.g. “three” or “London”.
Students then have to guess what the question might be for the piece of
information they receive, e.g. “How many sisters do you have?” and go around
asking that question or change to other questions until they find the right
answer. The people answering shouldn’t say whether they wrote that or not, but
just ask the question they are asked.

9. Shouting find someone who

Any of the variations can be played this way, which just involves giving them
an activity where they have to speak to everyone in the class but not letting
them stand up.

10. Shout or stand find someone who

If you have a class which is reluctant to speak loudly or to stand up, give them
the choice of deciding which is the lesser of two evils by telling them they have
to speak to everyone but not telling them how. Most classes will start by
speaking to their partner, speaking slightly louder to someone further away etc.
until they are standing up without any protests.

11. Say hello wave goodbye

Like introducing “So do I”, this variation adds both more language and more
fun. Students have to do the Find Someone Who activity whilst pretending they
are at a cocktail party or similar and starting and ending each conversation with
suitable language.
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12. Don’t say goodbye

In this variation on Say Hello Wave Goodbye, all the students are given
roleplay cards with their Find Someone Who tasks on, but some people’s tasks
only say “Keep your partner speaking for as long as possible”. Anyone who
starts speaking to that person then has the additional challenge of politely
ending the conversation so that they can move onto speak to someone else.

13. You’ll never find someone who

In this variation, students set each other Find Someone Who tasks. This can
either be something they think is not true of anyone in the class, or something
they know is true but they think is difficult to guess who.

14. You’ll never guess who

In the gossipy version, people have to try to find the answers to as many of
their questions as they can whilst speaking to the minimum number of people.
They do this by passing on all the information they have found so far,
including things they don’t need to know but they found out because they
know someone else was looking for it. You can also get them to trade pieces of
information.

15. If you tell me who

In this variation on You’ll Never Guess Who, students exchange information
so they can find the information on their role cards as quickly as possible, but
only giving people information they need if they can trade it for different
information they are looking for.

However, Mingling techniques can also be exploited in many other

comunicative activity types, such us; interview, question and aswer, comment-
response, sharing, task completion, even information gap activities.

Procedure of Mingling Technique

Before mingling technique starts, The teacher may need to pre-teach

certain items, such as; vocabulary, certain expressions, or specific structure,
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etc.Besides, it is necessary to give a good model to the students related to what

they are going to do.But, once the activity begins, it is up to the students to
express themselves. The following is a simple example of mingling activity that
can be used with low level class to provide practice the expression of like and
dislike;

1. As a model, ask some students questions expressing like and dislike, such as;
“do you you like ........ (watching TV)?”, “ Why?”, etc...
2. Devide the students into pairs. As pre-speaking mingling, ask the pairs to ask
question expressing like and dislike one another.
3. Before distributing the worksheet (appendix 1), Tell the students that they will
have a mingling activity to complet the task on the worksheet. Give clear
instructions about what they should do. If it is necessary, demonstrate the
mingle as a model for the students.
4. Distributing the worksheet and donate some times to the students to
comprehend the task on the worksheet.
5. Ask the students to mingle around the class to complete the task for allocated
time.
6. Ask some students to report what they have got to the class

Conclusion
Teachers of English offten face problems of having passive students who
show no willingness to speak in class, or students who seem not being interested
enough to speak, or students who seem interested but find it difficult to express
themselves.Many causes of the problems have been discussed. Most recent studies
have shown that students can learn better when they are given the chance to
practise a variety of activities that lead them smoothly from one idea to another.
For this case, the use of mingling technique may help the teacher to facilitate the
learners in learning speaking skills.

Mingling Technique is one of the most popular TEFL activities as it is a

good excuse to get students up and moving around, and so loosens their
inhibitions and wakes them up. It's effective because it just about ensures a high
 19

level of student participation. this activity is able to encourage interaction amongst

students, motivates students and give more chances to speak freely and to share
ideas in improving their speaking skill and to show their ability. Most important,
the students will really enjoy the activity.It also lowers inhibition levels,
encourages student centered correction and frees the teacher to observe and field
questions from students. The possible variations are endless. It can be used as an
icebreaker, for drills, or as an iniator of free conversation

Appendix 1.

Ask your friends a question using: “Do you like..................?”, and “Why do
you like it?”

Activity Someone who Why? Someone who Why?

likes this dislikes this

Watching
football
match

Playing
badminton

Watching
cinema
 20

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