Pluses and Minuses in Using Popular Speeches to Improve Students’ Technical Knowledge

Abstract

After the writing skill has been unprecedentedly compromised and almost dissipated by AI revolution, in-class speaking activities seem to remain privileged ways of acquiring and building specialised knowledge as they instantly reveal students’ capabilities along with their gaps. Learning happens faster when engineering students become aware of what they know best and what they do not yet know or they have wrongly learnt it. In an attempt to address their technical needs, language teachers create speaking scenarios meant to spark and feed students’ appetite for more authentic technical knowledge. Among these creative attempts, notable speeches by engineers, scientists and high-tech leaders become handy to turn into presentations about public speaking in general and technical data delivery in particular. Thus, sophomore students learn about how successful technical figures communicate and, at the same time, they learn how to better their own communication abilities. The present paper aims to identify the gains and limitations in employing popular speeches to improve students’ technical knowledge. This reflective analysis draws mainly on their oral performance in class and subsequent written feedback.