In English classes recently, these students have been learning about travel and tourism. This topic is a platform for them to learn the four key areas of English: reading, writing, speaking and listening. They have also learned key vocabulary related to this topic, which will be useful for them when they go on holiday abroad. It has also been a way for them to learn how to understand and describe famous and historical locations, such as the Great Wall of China, which we used as a case study to learn more about this important and useful topic.
The activity that we will share with you today has been especially useful for them to work on their speaking skills. For speaking, the students have been learning to produce extended sequences of speech, answering and asking questions, as well as expressing opinions with spontaneity and fluency. The teacher was there to guide them through this process.
• The teacher was there to guide students through the whole process, to offer them techniques, tips and advice to help them to improve.
Students were given an extended project, to design a presentation about a holiday destination that they are interested in. The presentation should try to convince the audience to travel to that location on holiday. The students spent a long time researching their location, creating a presentation about it and then practicing delivering the presentation to the class. They created a script about the location which they learned off-by-heart, so that they could talk to the audience directly without it later.
• Students gained learned important skills such as how to project their voice and use tones, how to use eye contact and body language. This was a chance for students to work on building their confidence.
The students learned some important presenting skills, including level and tone of voice, eye contact and persuasion techniques. The teacher was with them every step of the way to give them techniques for presenting and tips for how to improve. The students did a fantastic job of telling the class about each holiday destination.
• The students told the class all about their chosen tourist destination including geography, history, language, culture, food and the best places to visit as a tourist.
Once they had finished, the other students were called on to answer relevant and probing questions to the speaker, based on what they had heard. This meant that they needed to listen carefully and got practice asking questions when in the audience, as well as being challenged to answer those questions when speaking.
• Students asked relevant questions to the presenter to challenge them and to practice their question-answer skills.
Students were rewarded with house points based on the effort and quality of their presentations and presenting skills, as well as how well they answered questions from the audience and used their speaking skills to convince the audience to travel to their chosen destination. It was a fun as well as useful activity that the students enjoyed taking part in. This is a great way to build their confidence and social skills, as well as to learn English.
• Students gave feedback to one another about their presentations including what they thought was good about it and a little advice about how it could be improved next time.
