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Discussing languages

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This is a discussion activity that you can use to find out about your students’ opinions of language learning and how important they think it is.

Author: 
Jo Budden

It gets your students talking and sharing opinions but also gives you a chance to listen in and to understand their motivation and attitudes towards languages.

Preparation

Make a copy of the discussion statements and cut them into strips so those students can take one statement at a time and discuss it. Add some statements of your own if your students have specific language issues they may want to discuss.

Procedure

  • Put your students into groups of four or five and give each group a statement.
  • Let them discuss the statement for a few minutes while you monitor and feed in any language they need.
  • Then rotate the statements around the groups.
  • Once all the students have discussed all the statements you might want to have a class vote to see what the consensus of opinion is on these statements and share some of your own opinions and insights.

 Discussion statements

  • Everybody should speak at least two languages.
  • In the future there won’t be so many different languages in the world.
  • Tourists in my country should make an effort to speak my language.
  • Life would be easier if all countries spoke the same language.
  • I think learning languages is really important these days.
  • Girls are normally better at learning foreign languages than boys!
  • If languages disappear, different ways of thinking also disappear.
  • I would like to know more foreign languages.
  • Some languages are more important than others.
  • English is an ‘international language’.
  • Knowing foreign languages helps you to get a good job.

This activity was originally published in December 2007

Language level
Language Level: 
Intermediate: B1