WHY SHOULD ORAL PRESENTATIONS BE INTRODUCED IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AT TEACHER TRAINING FACULTIES

Abstract

The students of the Faculty of Education of Uzice have the English language classes during four semesters at their initial studies, that is, during the first and the third year, and again at their master studies. During the first year they mainly develop their grammatical and linguistic competences by reading and translating the texts whose topics relate to their future profession. As the groups of students are rather large there is not much time left for developing their oral skills. This problem is, to some extent, overcome during the third year of studies when the groups become smaller and the teacher is able to dedicate more time to developing speaking skills in the class. A very good speaking task is the introduction of oral presentations. The topics are carefully chosen to arouse studentsʼ interests and to make them want to engage in this kind of activity. The paper discusses the advantages and the weak points of this kind of oral tasks at the university level studies.