Teaching Speaking through Current Events

Abstract

This design project aims at enhancing students' speaking skills through motivating and engaging them with the help of discussions linked to current events. As current topics are related to learners' daily life, needs and interests, they make them speak up and express their own points of views. Based on the students' needs, the aim was to develop a course including the following goals: 1) to enrich their vocabulary; 2) to enhance fluency; 3) to increase students' speaking confidence. For this reason a variety of deliverables were implemented. The design project provides 10 detailed lesson plans including different activities, all fostering speaking skills. The reading topics about current events were retrieved from Internet and newspapers, discussions questions were designed as a brainstorming tool, vocabulary activities were created to track students' progress and finally, at the end of the lesson students wrote reflections about what they learnt on that specific day. Also, another activity was designed to enhance students' fluency- it was picture describing when they had to repeat whatever the instructor says about the picture which was also connected to current events.