6 Presenting and practicing language
There are several good reasons to introduce presentation and public speaking practice into our
EFL and ESL classes. The first and most important is that effective presentation and public speaking
skills are a valuable life skill. Learners can choose the content they present, and this brings a
variety of information and ideas into the classroom. Learners can learn more about each other,
and presentations can also be an easy way to break up a course and provide a change of pace. One
of the most practical ways to teach presenting skills is to break the complex and sometimes
overwhelming experience down into discrete skills. This makes it easy to introduce and practice
them gradually. Some examples of these skills would be posture (standing in a confident and open
manner), making eye contact, using appropriate volume and speed when speaking, choosing
content, use of rhetorical techniques, planning and structuring the talk, and use of visual aids. The
presenting sub-skills can be introduced one at a time and students can focus on certain skills as
they gain more experience presenting. In general, the physical skills are easier to explain and
harder to get right, so I usually recommend students start there in order to get the most practice
with them. After that they can go on to content selection and organization, visual aids, and
rhetorical techniques. Some teachers might hesitate to introduce presentation skills into language
classes, especially if they don’t have experience teaching them, but in my experience it is well
worth attempting and your students will probably thank you for it.
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