This article presents the findings of an action research study which aimed to find ways of increasing the students’ level of participation in speaking lessons. An eight-week action research study was conducted with 25 students during the speaking/listening sessions at the preparatory school of a foundation university to find an answer to our puzzle. The instructional intervention in our action research cycle involved the use of active and animated speaking activities such as group-chatting, pair or group work, practicing listening to native speakers in movies, group and whole class discussions based on movies, preparing and making presentations in the class. The data of the study were collected through student diaries, teacher-researcher field note, semi-structured interviews and an open-ended questionnaire. The findings of the study indicated that the students work well together as a group and that working in groups increase the students’ confidence in speaking and an increase in self-confidence results in an increase in classroom participation in speaking lessons. Involvement in an action research study has also increased the researcher’s confidence to adopt and apply speaking activities to increase the participation of the students in English lessons in the future.        Keywords:  Teaching speaking, active learning activities, communicative activities.