Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Jimskins]

I'm looking for a paragraph-level (high-beginner/low-intermediate) general writing textbook for a university freshman class for law students. The idea is to improve their overall reading & writing skills with law as the topic, so it doesn't necessarily need to be law-related. I have the reading part covered.

For a higher level class (low-intermediate and higher) I'm also looking for a general presentations textbook. Again, the students are all law majors so a more general text as opposed to, for example, a business presentations textbook (which I have found so far) would be more useful. I have lots of Legal English textbooks with which to adapt/supplement the general textbook.

If you've had a good experience of teaching with a presentations or a writing textbook please let me know which one.

Cheers.

[radish kimchi]

I had a newspaper course. This year I have high school students who have to give presentations.

From these two experiences, and even a role-play program I did for elementary school students, I think the important thing is to get them in front of a class speaking.

Anything is fair game. What you are actually missing is criteria to critique them with. I would determine this on a case by case basis.

In your "case", you are teaching law students (no pun intended). I would NOT use books. Why do you need that when you have a stronger suit in getting 2 students to debate? In a real court case, you have opening and closing statements. Why not use these as a basis to make presentations?

Their assignment would be to find a court case that matters to them. Then, they would have to pretend to be one of the lawyers. Or, they could pick a topic (murder, abortion, divorce, business contract law, medical malpractice, etc...) and then find 3 or more cases that are related which would support their position.

Use the class as a jury or if you have time put them in groups of 6 or more and they could role-play a hearing (2 people are the defendant and prosecution, 2 are lawyers, and 2 are people that are either witnesses or experts in the case).

[Jimskins]

Thanks for the response.

I've used the role-play you mentioned and the opening and closing statements before. Both indeed work well. The idea of this course is to make the students better prepared for further academic study in law and the workplace. The reality is that my uni is not top tier so the chances of my students actually becoming lawyers is very unlikely at best. Therefore I think a more general foundation in giving presentations in English might be a better way to go. Coupled with the fact that there's a group of none-legally trained new teachers that I am (ideally) expected to set the textbook for, makes me lean towards choosing a more familiar EFL textbook, then supplementing it with all the Legal English materials I already have. It's not the ideal situation I know.

Also although I say the presentation class will be low-intermediate+, the '+' may be stretching it a bit.