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Teacher Resources for ERLI


Suggestions for Choosing Speaking Exam Topics:

In choosing good topics, my biggest suggestion when considering a topic is to Google it (because that's what students will do), and see if the sites that come up are useful and appropriate for the level.

Googling your topic can also help you refine which words you use in your question as different word choices will yield better or worse results in a Google search.

For example, "why people in the US should have free healthcare" gives you a list of sites, and among this list are sites containing the topic: "why people in the US should have universal healthcare" This search parameter arranges the results in a different order. Since students often only look at the first few sites, you can guide them in their selection of sources by the words you choose in the topic question.

In a related note, debate.org can often be a good source for speech/presentation topics and info. If you type in the right description/keywords, you often can get clear positive and negative supports for topics. If you can't find results in their search box, Google your topic and then look for the debate.org link in the results,....for ex: "Should the government provide free health care?"

For lower level groups you could also narrow the field of sources by accompanying each topic with a short set of sites and requiring students to get their info from those sources. This requires more work on the teacher's part, but also give more control over the outcome.

Finally, I also would suggest that all the topics be of equal difficulty....meaning that there is not a mix of straight academic topics; for instance, "Why do people need to sleep?" ...and personal opinion-type topics like...."Which animal makes the best pet?"

 

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