On Wednesday, April 30, 2014 ELC Teaching Fellow Kerry Pusey hosted an “impromptu speaking” event on campus at Pacific Coffee. “Impromptu” means unplanned or improvised, so to begin the event, the host prompted students to think about when and where they might engage in impromptu speaking in their daily lives, to which they quickly responded, “Everywhere! Every day!” Of course, this is quite true and was one of the motivations for the event: to help students practice speaking in unplanned speech events in a fun and supportive atmosphere.

The event was like a mini workshop on speaking skills, focusing on aspects of public speaking such as body language (gestures), eye contact, and volume. For this event, however, there was a special focus on creativity – an aspect of language use that is sometimes not as strongly emphasized in language classrooms, but arguably should be. Thus, to hone students’ speaking skills and simultaneously allow them to engage their creativity, they had to respond quickly to unconventional speaking topics such as “explain three benefits of drinking milk”, and “convince the Rector of UM that students should not have to come to class on their birthday”. After each speaker gave their speech, the other participants then gave feedback on each of the speaking skills mentioned above, providing useful information for all about how to improve their speaking skills.