About this activity
Eight rehearsal tasks aimed at a graded oral presentation: say your opening sentence three times, slower each time — which was clearest; present sixty seconds on a topic you know and record it; identify your three hardest content words and rehearse each five times; practise the transition, moving on to my next point; rate your own recording on rate, volume and clarity. A presentation is the highest-stakes speaking task in a school year.
How to use it in a session
Find the hard content words first. Every presentation has three or four subject-specific words that will be repeated a dozen times, and rehearsing those is worth more than rehearsing the whole talk. Record the sixty seconds and let the student rate it before you say anything — their rating is the skill and yours is information. Twenty minutes covers a rehearsal with a recording and a self-review.
What to listen for
Listen for rate rising under pressure. Almost everyone speeds up in front of an audience, and a student whose sound survives at a rehearsal rate and not at a presentation rate has a specific, predictable problem. Watch the transitions, which are the moments students look down at notes and lose their articulation entirely.
Carrying it home
Presenting to a family member is a real rehearsal and a genuinely different task from presenting to a mirror. One run-through with a real listener is worth three alone.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Ninth through twelfth grade, for residual articulation errors heading into graded presentations.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight tasks are free to use with no account.
- Why focus on the content words?
- Because they repeat. Three subject-specific words said a dozen times each dominate how clear a presentation sounds, and rehearsing them is a far better use of time than running the whole talk again.