Job Discussion Forums

[thelmadatter]

Help!

I need suggestions for oral presentations. My advanced classes (high school age) do one oral presentation as a group (of 3-4) each period (~4 weeks). For period I, the topic was a cultural event in any English-speaking country. For period II, we are doing a general presentation of any African/Eastern European/Asian countries (ones they are not likely to know a whole lot about). The idea is to get them to speak (no notes allowed) and learn a little something. I also like to focus on English as a global language.

Now Im stuck for a theme for Period 3 (the last period of the semester) or maybe something entirely different. Any suggestions?

[Guy Courchesne]

I always like to use the the topic of Change when asking students to make presentations. I find it gets them to use multiple tenses at the same time, while working on cohesion.

Change in the self
Change in your city
Change in politics
Ideas for changing something (think environment, toruism, etc)
Changing families
Changing technology

2 centavos

[Glenski]

Here in Japan, I teach a similar projects class for seniors. The various topic themes recently have been as follows:

biography of a famous person. Restrictions were not to choose someone too young, and the presentation had to include equal time on 3 sections of the person't life -- pre-career, career highlights, and activities outside of the career. This was done on PowerPoint after Internet searching.

make a TV commercial. Actually, it was supposed to be 2-3 minutes, so it was longer than a real commercial, but students had to dream up a product (complete with marketing design document), write a script, and act it out for video filming in class. They could provide background music if they liked, but they had to include some sort of slogan or catch copy, and maybe sing a jingle.

perform a survey. Students chose a topic, either from a list I created, or from their own invention (approved by me), then they wrote a 10-question questionnaire (approved by me) which they used on fellow students of any grade and/or on teachers. Then they used PowerPoint and Excel to display and describe the results. Data alone was not sufficient. They had to explain things.

scavenger hunt for English. Students had to spend time outside class looking for anything that contained written English. If they could bring it to class, good. If not, they were asked to take a photo of it. The point was to show where English exists even in their foreign country. In class, each group had to describe what they found, and explain (using superlatives) why they thought this was unique (the funniest, the strangest, the most wonderful, etc.). Although groups were asked to try finding 20 items or more, they only had to present the top 5.

[VanKen]

I've had great success with getting students to talk about "My Favourite Vacation". They were there, so to speak, so the student can speak with confidence as a real expert on the subject. Students learn to use props (i.e. souvenirs, postcards) while they speak. Most importantly for the class (and myself), everybody learns something and often discover a new travel destination.

[Roger]

Glenski - great ideas!

I only have a small contribution to make that I have made a couple of times before: Students like nothing better to talk - or is it braga? - about than their pranks and how they have or were cheating their way through exams.

Alternatively, give them a chance to earn back "respectability" by letting them talk about what teachers could do to stop the rot.

Worked fine for me with middle-school and university students!

[moonraven]

Replications of news programs--or even parodies of same. Better if videotaped and presented so that students can see errors, where they did well, and where not so well.

I have had a lot of success with debates, also.

[dajiang]

Check out my weblog at http://eslmaniac.web-log.nl/
Go to speaking activities or presentations and see if there's anything you could use. Lot of the stuff is from the cookbook.

I really like the ideas mentioned before btw.
Might put those up the web as well.

Regards,
Dajiang

[lostinparis]

For my French uni students, I asked them to pick a controversial topic, give reasons for or against, present their personal opinion, then think of two good questions about their topic that they could discuss with the class.

They had a lot of fun with it, as they enjoy debate.