The aim of this activity is to involve the students in the process of revising the content of recent classes and producing prompts for a speaking assignment.
The Task
I usually use it at the end of the unit when the students are already familiar with some useful vocabulary and have some ideas about the content of the chapter.
Distribute one worksheet per 2 students. Ask your students to think about the main questions/ issues/problems you had discussed in this unit. Students try to map the content of class discussions onto the diagram in order to model it after Speaking part 3 task. The example below comes from my current CAE course
The example below comes from my current CAE course (our coursebook is Advanced Expert). I first used this task at the end of unit 4 which discusses various forms of civil activism inc. protests. My students came up with the following ideas:
Diagram 1
The central question: How effective are these forms of activism?
- organising demos
- writing to newspapers
- writing petitions
- sit-inss
- strikes
Diagram 2
Central questions: How likely are people to protest against these different issues?
- animals cruelty
- changes in education
- gender inequality
- changes in the legal system
- degradation of environmental
Then, students swap their diagrams and follow Speaking part 3 instructions.
Take a look at more ideas for speaking activities for FCE and CAE students here, here, and here.
Personal Experience
My main aim was to activate my students and offer them some exam speaking practice they would find a tad less boring than usual. I was not surprised they were able to come up with some quality ideas as they are well familiar with the exam format already. The activity doubles as vocabulary revision and creates a perfect opportunity for the students to try and incorporate the words they had learned in a given unit. The fact, it is incredibly low prep (once you make a lot of copies of the diagram in advance) is an additional perk.
