So, I practically tortured my students this week. How, you may ask? I made them do what all students hate the most… Give speeches. And, wow. Never have I had my students look at me with such disdain! As a student myself, I too have never been very fond of giving speeches, but being that I am in charge of helping them with their speaking skills, I was bound to force them to give at least one speech!

The lesson itself did not begin quite as planned, however. The lovely Universidad de Salamanca wifi decided to stop working and was not up and running on Tuesday nor Wednesday! I felt bad that I could not give my lesson in its entirety, but not to worry. My advising professors were very understanding.

So, instead of starting the classes with a wonderful PowerPoint outline the Do’s and Don’ts of giving speeches, I told the class we were going to do something very fun, aka give extemporaneous speeches. Although in theory it should have been fun, getting them to not be nervous was like pulling teeth! It was honestly to be expected, but it reality, the speeches were not actually graded so there was no major pressure on them to be perfect.

To begin, I asked for volunteers to come up to give their speech. In each class, I had about two or three students that volunteered to go first, just simply to get the dreaded speeches over with. As each student stepped up to the front of the class, I gave them a random topic from my glorious list of topics. The topics included simple themes like”Cats vs. Dogs” and ranged to more complex themes like “Are selfies bad?” Once I told each student their topic, they had several seconds to gather their thoughts and/or ask me questions about the topic. After those few seconds, they were off! I gave each student a minimum time requirement of 1.5 minutes to talk about their topic, which may seem like only a little bit of time. However, most of the students struggled to continue to talk about their topic. With some prompting, each student discussed their topics and generally did well with the assignment.

As they spoke for their short 1.5 minutes, I was able to realize a few things about my students that I had not yet realized. For one, I found that what they had previously told me about “not being good at speaking in English” was generally not true. It is to say that almost every one of my students in both classes has an anxiety about speaking in English. This is not surprising, because I was once in that same position when it came to speaking in Spanish. Because of their anxieties about speaking, they seemed to revert to telling me that they do not speak English very well. What a lie! Their speeches proved to me that they were able to think of complex ideas and express themselves very well and often times with rich vocabulary. Another thing that I noticed was that their way of dealing with their anxiety was to simply look at me and tell me that they did not know what to say. I realize that extemporaneous speeches really put you on the spot, but with a topic like “Cats vs. Dogs,” it theoretically should not have been terribly difficult. Despite their stage fright, I did feel a great sense of empathy for their fears, because again, I have been in that very position.

One of the greatest aspects of this internship thus far is what I have received in return. Yes, my job is to show up and teach my students something. But in return, they have taught me a great deal as well. As a student, I can relate to them which helps a lot. I understand them, and I think they understand that. It had been a true blessing so far, and I look forward to my last few weeks with my anxious students who have yet to realize their full potential.

sinceramente