LESSON OVERVIEW

In this speaking class, students watch a video about the purpose of universities and practise talking about education and universities. 

This is a Speaking Class worksheet. It includes a variety of tasks that let your students practise their speaking skills. This lesson format does not focus on grammar or vocabulary. Learn more about it here.

WARM-UP & DISCUSSION

In the warm-up task, students need to say what some academic acronyms stand for (e.g. BA, MSc, MD). Then, they discuss some general questions about higher education. For instance, they talk about the subjects which are popular at universities, and about their experience with universities. They also discuss what helps the best universities stand out from the average ones. After that, students read seven statements about universities and higher education. The statements refer to exams, teachers, departments, academic degrees, etc. Students need to decide to what extent they agree with the statements. They have to use the scale 1–5 where 1 means completely disagree and 5 means completely agree. The task gets students talking about education in depth. 

VIDEO & TALKING ABOUT EDUCATION

In this part of the lesson, students watch the video. They need to finish some sentences with the ideas from the video as well as their own. After that, they discuss some of the unusual ideas mentioned in it, e.g. the idea of reorganising university departments so that they reflect the problems our society faces nowadays. In the last two tasks, students spend some time talking about education and the problems it faces nowadays. Students look at a list of areas they might be problematic in higher education and say whether the problems exist in their countries. The problems include student loans, declining enrollments and online classes. Finally, they choose one or two of the problems they identified and discuss what could be done to address them. The teacher can choose to ask students to work in groups or pairs and to brainstorm some ideas to address the problems. The groups or the pairs can then compare the ideas with other students and pick the best ones.