Bilingual Speech Presentation
Central idea: Media has the power to influence our perspective and the choices we make.
As part of our "How we express ourselves" unit of inquiry regarding how media can influence our choices, the students in Class 5 - 1 and 5 - 2 were tasked with using a form of media - writing and delivering persuasive speeches in English and in Chinese - to try to influence the audience's thinking about a topic or issue. In English class, we wrote speech outlines for two topics, one of which was "Are video games good or bad for children?" and the other was "Is music good or bad?" In Chinese, the prompt was about what makes our school, Kuei Shan, a special place. For the purposes of the speech contest, students were allowed to use these speeches or re-edit them to their liking with new details and examples. Some students even took the additional step of writing their own completely new speech! It turned out to be an interesting speech contest.
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Love this write-up about the bilingual speech presentation! It’s really inspiring to see how young learners build such genuine confidence when speaking across two languages, especially when given the freedom to express their own unique ideas. Encouraging students to practice with lighthearted themes, like picking from 200+ Funny Speech Topics, can be an incredible way to break the ice and take the pressure off before they tackle more complex, serious arguments. It makes me wonder whether children naturally pick up public speaking skills faster in a bilingual environment compared to a monolingual one, or if it purely comes down to how frequently they get to present in front of their peers.