| LESSON OVERVIEW
In this speaking class, students watch a video about the purpose of universities and practise talking about education and universities.
C1 / Advanced45 min
60 minSpeaking ClassUnlimited Plan
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.
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Nice plan, thank u!
I’d be really happy if you create a lesson plan to the topic “women’s day”:)
Thanks! You should use one of the lessons from the topic women.
You could have an example of a university in this activity or maybe the students could study the rankings and how accurate they are. Maybe a reading text would also help this activity.
Hi! Thaks for the ideas. I think asking students to comment on university rankings from their country is a great one 🙂
loved this! students had a good time discussing this topic, thank you!
Thanks! That’s fantastic to hear 🙂
Super lesson, thanks!!!
Glad you like it! Thanks for the comment 🙂
Thanks for the ideas!:)
Glad you like them!
That’s a cool lesson. I’d love it if you had more lessons focused on academic life and/or academic writing.
Thanks for the ideas, Gabriela!