1. All these speaking activities seem interesting, but I haven’t got a chance to use them all during my classes. Debates can be hard for beginners, so it’s better to avoid this activity if your students are not well-prepared. As for Show and tell, I’ve never heard about it before. I’d like to try it as soon as possible because it seems to be inspiring for students.
Role play activity can be tricky, especially if you use it for the first time. It’s important to start with some vocabulary practice and use role play activity as a link between new words and students’ everyday life. They will easily remember new vocabulary and also be able to use it properly.
2. Students make a lot of mistakes. One of the possible solutions is postponed error-correction. All together students should try to find out their mistakes and correct them. Another option is to classify students’ common mistakes and give them speaking activities with additional task. For example, if they usually forget to add “S” to the verbs in present simple, you can ask them to pay attention at this very mistake before they start and give some kind of feedback. It can even be a ranking system for students in order to show them their personal success in avoiding particular kind of mistake.
Not all students participate. It’s hard to encourage all students to participate in open class speaking activities, but it’s much easier to do so in small groups or pairs.
Sometimes students aren’t interested in the topic. Well, at the beginning of the year it makes sense to ask students what would they like to discuss.
The students spend a lot of time speaking their mother language. The best way to avoid it is to speak only English with your students. They usually adopt teacher’s behavior, so if you never use mother language during your classes they will try to do the same.