Empowering Students Through Speaking Round Tables

Abstract

Oral communication teachers constantly strive to empower students to become confident English speakers. In order to become fluent, students must spend class time speaking English, but it can be difficult to increase individual speaking time and still meet the goals of the curriculum. Many teachers focus on individual presentations; however, this is time-consuming and difficult in large classes. This paper will explain Round Tables, a practical, engaging alternative to the traditional classroom presentation. Round Tables are small groups of students, with each student given a specific speaking role to perform. The roles allow students to practice different types of presentations and build fluency. Throughout the course, students present to their Round Table several times, improving their confidence and competence, while still allowing teachers to achieve other goals. This paper will also provide an implementation structure and offer materials that can be adapted for different classrooms. Developing speaking skills is essential for students to become fluent in a language. According to Folse (2006), one key factor in a speaking course is that students should be doing the majority of the speaking throughout the class. While informal conversation can be practiced and improved through group work and pair work, in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) setting, the goal is not only informal conversation but also formal presentation practice. It is essential to provide students more formalized opportunities to develop their self-expression and help build an authentic voice (Roberts & Cooke, 2009). Yet individual presentations are timeconsuming and difficult in large classes, with only one student speaking at a time while all other students are listening. In large classes, it can easily take more than one full class period for each student to give a standard five-minute speech. In addition, for the majority of this class time, students are primarily developing listening skills instead of interacting with the presenter or developing their own presentation skills. This represents a huge loss of student speaking time. Therefore, lost time and the limited linguistic output of the majority of the students during individual presentations are major disadvantages of heavily focusing on this activity throughout the semester. However, acquiring the skills necessary to give effective presentations is one major component of effective speaking, especially within an EAP environment. Of the four Language Education in Asia, 2013, 4(1), 39-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/13/V4/I1/A4/Harms_Myers