Chapter 13: Setting Their Tongues Wagging: Speaking and Discussion 193
Planning a Discussion Lesson
In Chapter 6 I talk about production activities that encourage students to
communicate freely without you putting words into their mouths. Discussion
can form just one stage of a lesson that focuses on something else (using a
grammatical structure or some new vocabulary) or you make discussion the
main aim in itself. When you plan a discussion lesson you still need to have
presentation and practice stages, which I discuss in Chapters 5 and 6, and
then the discussion at the end. Even if the lesson is about discussion skills
such as introducing your opinion, there should still be interesting subject
matter for the class to talk about.Choosing the right topic
An error many new teachers make is to expect students to put their heart
and soul into discussing something that they’d never even mention in their
own language. If you ask your students to have a five-minute discussion on
the difference between their own pencil and their partner’s, your lesson is
unlikely to be a roaring success.Although it’s true that you need to find simple things for your students to talk
about, you can’t milk a topic beyond its natural length. So my best advice for
choosing the topic is to ask yourself a few questions:✓ If you had to discuss this topic yourself, how keen would you be?
✓ For how long would you be willing to discuss it?
Personally, I’d be prepared to talk about pencils for two minutes and no
longer. So, be realistic. Your students’ enthusiasm and goodwill only go so far.Give some thought to the age and backgrounds of you students too. For
example, with children ask them to talk about and role-play things that are
relevant to them such as cartoon characters and pop stars.In general, topics with international appeal are great to get everyone talking.
A few famous people are so well known that you can bring them into discus-
sions almost anywhere in the world: Michael Jackson, Jackie Chan, Queen
Elizabeth, the Beatles, Mickey Mouse and so on. Issues related to the environ-
ment, crime, family life, finding and keeping a job and love transfer very well
across ages and nationalities.If you ask students to discuss their local issues, find out beforehand whether
it’s possible to translate the words they need into English. If the situation has
no real comparison in the English-speaking world, your students feel frus-
trated trying to express it.