Talk Show as a Way to Encourage Listening Speaking in the Classroom

 

 

Kinanti Pinta Karana

 

 

Teachers are sometimes trapped into the notion that a listening-speaking class must always be ended with students making dialogues. The idea may come from habits or perhaps teachers just cannot find the time to come up with other activities. This workshop aims to show fellow teachers that there are many options of listening-speaking related activities, one of them is doing a talk show in the classroom.

 

Why Talk Show? To answer the question, let us think about a black woman whose talk show has become one of the World’s most watched program. Oprah Winfrey. Her show, Oprah, discusses everything. Everything. She brings up topics from everyday matters such as parenthood problems to the latest editions from Victoria’s Secrets. Once she even gave out hundreds of expensive cars to her audience in the studio. That is what I call a real talk show. Not only the show gets the guests to talk, it also makes people talk about it as well. If Oprah seems so American (which I personally doubt for she discusses universal topics), what about other talk shows in our local televisions here. A more laid back format can be found in “Ceriwis” a production of Trans TV or a more serious one, “Debat Minggu Ini” at SCTV.

 

I am sure most students know at least one of the talk shows mentioned above. I am also sure that they do not mind having a talk show in a class room, in which they can participate. Moreover, they are free to choose the topics. It can be anything from dating to fashion, or who knows, politics. Students, like children, are an endless source of surprises.

 

 

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Karana, K. P. (2005, March). Talk show as a way to encourage listening speaking in the classroom. Paper presented at LIA International Conference, Jakarta, Indonesia.

 

 

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