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valley_girl · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 11:22 pm Post subject: Oral Presentation Topics

For those of you whose students give oral presentations, do you "help" them with their topic selection or do you give them free reign?

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Mine make official topic proposals. This gives me a piece of writing also... I urge them to choose something from their fields/future goals, in hopes of encouraging relevant vocab expansion. However, I'll accept any topic not obviously frivolous...... for example, I rejected 'American Basketball' as not representing anything to do with that learner's personal future goals (he was both vertically-and horizontally challenged!). But I've found that the vast majority of learners seem to take the proposal seriously and to try to come up with something really useful to them.

basiltherat · Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 952

usually ask them to choose 1 from 4 or 5. seems to work well. they seem happy about this.
best
basil

Gordon · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 5309 Location: Japan

I never give too many choices, less than 8. If too many, they can't make up their mind, too few and they might cheat or it will be boring for the class as it's too repetiitve.

denise · Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 3419 Location: finally home-ish

In Japan, gave them a short list of types of presentations, each with a few examples: a how-to presentation (how to play their favorite sport, cook their favorite food, etc.), a narrative presentation (their hometown, their favorite book/movie, etc.), a social/politicial presentation (their opinion on whatever current events are going on...), a skit, etc. I also give them some concrete examples of what students in past classes have done.

Here in Peru (where I trust the students to have more motivation!), I gave them the same suggestions and was amazed at the range of topics that they selected. I am looking forward to hearing them this week.

d

Jizzo T. Clown · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 10:32 pm Post subject:

I give them an open-ended topic, for example, I had them do a report on a famous explorer this week. While a few of them did Columbus, the reports were actually quite varied. Another example was assigning a report on a famous African American for Black History Month. Of course, most chose Rosa Parks, but they did a pretty good job with their research. As long as they don't copy and paste, it's all good!