Short Speeches

I have my 5th and 6th grade students present short speeches in English several times throughout the year.  This not only allows them to utilize the vocabulary and target sentences that we have been studying, but also helps them to practice the skills that are essential for public speaking in any language.

For the 5th grade, the speech topics are "I like/don't like..." and "This is my..."  6th graders use "I can/can't..." and "I want to be a..." 

Example:
Hello!
My name is Martin.
I like badminton.
I don't like math.
Nice to meet you!

Apart from the grammatical points and pronunciation, I ask them to focus on 5 important points: Voice, posture, eye-contact, speed, and gestures/body language.

To introduce and explain these points, I give a short speech of my own to the class 5 times, but each time I perform it in a way that is lacking one of the points.  By speaking extremely quietly or at a very high speed, the students can easily guess each piece of advice that I want to give them, and it also brings some humor into the lesson, which helps to make it memorable.  I ask students to watch and listen to me carefully, and make a note on their speech cards in the box labeled "advice".

After checking their understanding of these points, then we can write the script of the speech itself.  Together we write out the basic structure, such as "Hello! My name is...", but the details should be decided and written by themselves.  These speeches are a perfect chance for students to express themselves and their own world in English, and they should not be limited to the handful of vocabulary terms in the textbook.  Students should use dictionaries if they are available, or ask their teachers to help with any difficult words that they may not know, such as "unicycle" or "track and field".

Once the scripts are written and they have had sufficient time to practice, I ask the students to present their speech one by one in front of the class.  I make sure to tell them that I am not grading them or choosing the best, and they can use their scripts during the speech if they want to, as long as they do not just read from it.  The majority of the students do their best to memorize their speeches.

If possible, it can be worthwhile to take a video of the speeches, so that students can watch themselves later and self-critique.  It can also be effective to show students their own speeches after a year or so, so that they can see how they have improved over time.