dr Grzegorz Śpiewak

Biogram

Academic consultant, ELT project manager, international conference speaker, author. Currently affiliated with Macmillan Education, as Head ELT Consultant for Central & Eastern Europe and a key teacher trainer, and with The Foundation for the Development of Language Education, as its president. Winner of EDU-Inspiracje 2013 award and of European Language Label award 2016; shortlisted for British Council ELTON – Innovation Award 2016 for ‘Teacher Trainer Academy‘ programme.

Stop teaching "speaking", so to speak

Spoken interaction vs. spoken production in your language classroom

Despite two and a half decades of the CEFR, language teaching has largely failed to act on one of its most consequential distinctions: spoken interaction is not spoken production. In everyday classroom practice, the two are still treated as variants of the same skill, assessed with the same criteria and corrected with the same instincts. The result is a silent contradiction at the heart of communicative teaching: learners are often asked to interact, but judged as if they were performing.

This keynote argues that many familiar problems in speaking lessons — over-correction, unclear expectations, and fragile learner confidence — are not accidents, but symptoms of a deeper conceptual confusion. The session demonstrates why interaction and production are in essence incompatible modes — cognitively, pedagogically, and assessment-wise, and challenges participants to stop “teaching speaking” as a single construct. Participants will leave with practical classroom tips, feedback strategies, and assessment grids that make this crucial distinction explicit, actionable, and learner-friendly.