Inspiring Golden Speeches

Abstract

In an incredibly competitive Korean society, a number of university students spend time and money studying English or studying abroad. They try to improve their communicative English abilities and get high scores on L2 proficiency tests because a lot of companies in Korea demand those qualifications. According to a survey conducted by Jobs Korea in 2012, 87% of 755 university students said that they received private English lessons to prepare for their employment (Gyosu Newspaper, 2012), which demonstrates the importance of English competence in finding a job. There are, however, few chances for learners to practice and improve their public speaking skills. Therefore, I plan to design “Inspiring Golden Speeches” aiming at building learners’ public speaking skills as well as improving their writing skills by means of producing a script for speeches. University graduates who have good public speaking skills are better prepared than those who do not, to find jobs and also in their future careers. My textbook, “Inspiring Golden Speeches”, includes how to organize their ideas coherently and speak in a confident and sophisticated manner. My target students are university students and their present proficiency level is intermediate based on the ACTFL scale. They can communicate in daily situations in the target language without many difficulties. Most of them have high TOEIC scores and are mostly business major, who want to work in an international company or in other countries. Some of them also want to pursue academic careers abroad. They, however, lack confidence in public speaking because they have had few chances to do so. They, therefore, need and desire to improve their public speaking skills in English. The class consists of both women and men who are taking this course in a private educational setting. This course will enable students to write for various purposes and use the target language confidently in scenarios such as English job interviews and presentations. My textbook is focused on the productive skills of writing and speaking because my target students want to improve their public speaking skills in the L2. I intend to incorporate inspiring speeches through the Process and Genre Approaches to writing. I believe that powerful and inspiring speeches by innovative, influential and respectable people will provide my students not only with quality English input, but also with the inspiration and passion needed to encourage them to work on their own public speaking skills.