Do you find your students sometimes struggle to develop their responses to prompts for Speaking exams? I used the “My Place In The World” idea to help students to broaden their thinking. (This could also be used to develop ideas for essays.)
First I asked them to consider this question: Why is education important? and to give their own opinions. (This actually led to a conversation that was far more interesting than I anticipated about whether progress was always A Good Thing and whether we will ever finish improving.)
Then I gave out a sheet with the circles below (you could just get them to draw it) and asked them to add the following to their circles in the place or places they felt were appropriate:
- My mum/dad
- My grandparents
- My teachers
- My doctor
- People who live in a part of the country that is very different from where I live
- People with various different religions
- Children
- Older people
- Women
- Disabled people
- Very poor people
- Very wealthy people
- People who live in extreme climates
- People whose country has a different political system from mine
- 100 years ago
- 2050
After that I asked them to revisit the original question, but this time to consider what someone in the Family circle might think. They came up with some new ideas they hadn’t previously mentioned. Then, as you can probably guess, they did the same thing with the other circles, choosing one group of people and discussing what their views might be.
When we got to the outer circle, one student picked 2050, which was a great opportunity to elicit / remind him of the modals of speculation. Bonus!
The activity helped prompt them into coming up with fuller, better developed responses, and I’ll definitely encourage them to have this in front of them in future Speaking skills classes.
To download the circles document I used, please click on the picture above.
A Hive of Activities 