3 Helpful Ways Improve Spanish Conversation Skills

I’m going to start with a big admission. For a long time in my career as a Spanish teacher, I avoided having students participate in a Spanish conversation. We did a lot of speaking in class, but it was mostly presentational. And sometimes, we would do question and answer activities, but as separate items, not related to a conversation. Students weren’t good at it! And it seemed unfair to grade students participating in a conversation. What if their partner held them back?

Is this you? Are you moving towards proficiency and wanting to help your students use their Spanish in the real world? Here are some ways to get started.

Spanish Conversation Ideas

The first step to improve a Spanish conversation is to simply make them do it regularly! Practice makes improvement! These are my 3 ideas:

Put a question on the board/projector. Ex: “Ask your partner, What are some things you’d like to do in the future?” Set a timer. Ask your students to have a very short conversation. 2-3 minutes is appropriate if this is a new activity, or if your students are not accustomed to having conversations. Tell students they each must ask 1 or 2 follow-up questions based on what their partner says.
Ask them to do a Guided Conversation. Guided conversations will be a longer and more in depth conversation. This activity requires a bit more teacher prep, but not too much! Create a conversation guide so students can use it to keep the conversation going. (See the image below.) Guided conversations provide a scaffold for newer language learners so that they have the confidence to carry out a whole Spanish conversation!
Simulated conversations are another way students can practice this skill. Simulated conversations are when Person A of the conversation is pre-recorded. The student listens to the first “turn” of the other speaker, and then records their response to what the recorded speaker says. The AP Spanish test has this as one of the sections, with a conversation guide. The AAPPL test has this with no conversation guide. So that part is up to you!

If you need help with how to create these kinds of activities, I have links at the bottom of this post to other posts that will explain how to do it!

Strategies for Spanish Conversations

Now that you have some ideas for how to make Spanish conversations a regular part of your class, now we need some strategies to help students improve their skills while participating.

One important strategy is to teach vocabulary that makes their speech sound more natural. There are lots of words and expressions that people use regularly in conversation such as

-pausing words

-expressions for agreement

-expressions for disagreement

My strategy is to put one or 2 expressions from each category on the board for students to see. I ask them to work those into their conversations. Maybe you continue to give the same expressions for a month or a marking period. Then, add new ones! Students do not need to know them all, but they should know some! With practice and repetition, they will become part of their normal Spanish conversation!

Another Strategy for Spanish Conversation

We all know that comprehensible input is very helpful for language development. So the last strategy for this post is to have students listen to others in Spanish conversation! Give them the opportunity to improve both their listening skills and to pick up on the strategies that others use to conduct their conversations. You can:

-ask/prepare comprehension questions to check their understanding during or after listening

-ask students to identify pausing words and expressions of agreement/disagreement

-explain how one speaker let the other know they were actively listening, etc.

Giving students the chance to use their metacognition as a learning strategy to improve their Spanish conversation skills can be a really helpful tool! After you congratulate them for noticing these strategies, ask them to use one in their next conversation!

Where do you find conversations for students to listen to? I use YouTube, Edpuzzle, AP Classroom, and sometimes I create my own with a colleague or Spanish-speaking friend!