Exploring Global Issues: A Guide to Individual Oral Presentations and Portfolio Reflections - Free Paper

Introduction

The personal oral presentation is on the ground of exploring what has been carried out by the learner in the portfolio. During the exploration process, the students investigate some texts that are non-literary and literary works and some global issues. While on the individual oral, the learner ought to decide on which international issue and which word and text to explore during the task. The learner must select one non-literary text and work. The selected extract must not exceed 40 lines and should represent the global issue. In texts or forms where the required number of lines is not applicable, the teachers will be guided using the text volume discussed in the available time.

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The text and work ought to provide a connection with the issue presented. The oral presentation should be supported by arguments on how both explore and represent the global issue. Students have to identify two extracts from work and form the text, clearly demonstrating the relevant moments when the global issue was focused. The extracts are not supposed to exceed 40 lines or have materials that cannot be manageable (Mäkelä, 2020). When students present copies of the extract that are unrelated to the oral presentation, lengthy extracts may prevent the student's ability to expand their discussion to work in general. An extract can a finished text by itself, for instance, an advert or poem.

The extracts are used to guide students in focusing on their responses, remove the need for them to study quotations, and explore issues like specific devices and style and other techniques by authors in presenting the global issue. The extract choice should demonstrate the student's understanding of the importance of the part concerning the general and allow the coverage of smaller and larger choices by writers in shaping their perceptions about the global issue.

The global issue includes these properties:

• Have a significance on a large scale
• Should be transactional
• The impact is felt in local contexts.

Students may explore several inquiry fields to decide on the global issue for focusing on their orals. The topics below are intended to be starting points for the students in generating ideas and generating a specific issue for their individual oral.

Identity, Culture, and Community

Here, students can focus on how the text explores family, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and gender aspects, and how they impact societies and individuals. They can also look into the issues concerning colonialism, migration, and nationalism.

Values, belief, and Education

Students can focus on how the texts explore values and beliefs nurtured in certain societies and how they shape communities, individuals, and education systems. They can explore the various tensions arising from conflicts of values, beliefs, and ethics.

Power, Politics, and Justice

Students can focus on how the text explores aspects of responsibilities and rights, government institutions, and structure. They can also look into power hierarchies, resources, wealth distribution, limits of the law and justice, inequality and equality, peace, and human rights.

Creativity, art, and imagination

Students can focus on how text explores inspiration, creation, craft, aesthetics, and beauty. They can also look into challenging and shaping perceptions using art and the effects and value in the community and society.

Technology, Science, and Environment

Students can focus on how the text explores relationships between the environment and humans and technological implications for society. The idea of scientific progress and development can also be discussed. In deciding on the oral presentation for the global issue, the students ought to be mindful and not simply select from the fields of inquiry given above, but determine the various issues to discuss that are reasonably explored.

For instance, in community, identity, and culture, gender can be unsuitable for a student's oral presentation. Students interested in such themes might instead explore how gender disparity manifests itself in various contexts. This can be demonstrated in several ways; how varied authorial choices determine the meaning of gender bias, whether gender bias should be negatively or positively viewed, giving the students a chance to assess the writer's choices and their effect on the viewer's understanding (Newell et al. 2017). The oral presentation will be concerned with concepts of global issues related to the texts identified. The students have to ensure that the oral presents a balanced approach, providing approximate attention to both texts. Therefore, students should identify the extracts or texts offering sufficient material in the discussion. The learners' portfolio is not assessed specifically but is relevant for the students in exploring and reflecting upon their works on global issues.

In line with the preparation of the oral presentation, the portfolio of the learner presents an opportunity for the students to:

• Explore the various links that can be established between texts on the ground of common global aspects they address.
• Explores how the key passages studied represent similar or different perspectives on a global issue through content and form.
• Keep a record of the various global issues that are relative to the texts the students read.
• Trace the development of their planning and thinking concerning the global issue and how the definition and application of its cultural value to the given text have changed via their inquiry.
• Reflect on challenges that internal assessment presents for the individual students.

References

Mäkelä, L. (2020). “I am bilingual because I feel like one”–language identity of Finnish IB students.

Newell, G. E., Goff, B., Buescher, E., Weyand, L., Thanos, T., Kwak, S., & Boczkowski, D. (2017). Adaptive expertise in the teaching and learning of literary argumentation in high school English language arts classrooms. English language arts research and teaching: Revisiting and extending Arthur Applebee's contributions, 157-171.