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Engaging Personal Experiences for Oral Responses: 5W1H & Emotions
- Posted By Superadmin Lilbutmighty
- 02/25/2025
Welcome back, lil’ ones! My name is Mr Joel Lim and I am a Specialist English Teacher at Lil’ but Mighty. We will be going through how to make your personal experiences engaging and exciting for your listeners!
Why is it important for us to share a personal experience in our oral response? Sharing a personal experience helps to make our response unique and reflective. Additionally, it demonstrates our ability to relate the topic to our personal lives.
What counts as a good personal experience? One way to think about this is to have your examiner know something more about you. If, by the end of your response, the examiner is able to know something more about you, you are on the right track!
Now let’s go through three strategies on how to make the personal experience engaging!
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1. Think of an authentic experience to share
We are all different and the types of experiences that we go through also differ greatly! As such, the experiences that we have can be interesting to our examiners! Keep them engaged by sharing these authentic experiences!
However, if you have many experiences to share, perhaps you can share the experience that you feel is the most interesting! Is there anything that you have experienced that might be more unique or not that common? If it’s related to the topic, be sure to share about that! That would be a very effective way to hook the attention of your examiners!
Some examples of authentic experiences you can share would be something you are really invested in or enjoy. Do you have a hobby or interest that might be more unique among your peers? For example, do you regularly volunteer at an animal shelter? Do you learn K-Pop dance covers in your free time? I think that these are fascinating and definitely worth sharing, if it’s related to the topic.
For me, whenever an interesting and authentic experience is brought up, I am always keen to find out more about what the student has to say. That is when I find myself the most engaged! Try to engage your listener in this way too!
2. Add specific details to your personal experience
Adding specific details to the experience that you are sharing is a good way to help your listeners better visualise what is going on. If your listeners are able to visualise what is happening in your story, they would be more invested in it.
What are some specific details you can include? Think about adding in the 5W1H details — who, where, when, what, why and how.
Try to be as specific as you can about who was involved in that experience, where it took place and what you were doing. Besides that, be sure to tell listeners how you were feeling throughout the experience, and if there were any thoughts that you might have had while going through that experience.
For example, your interesting experience might be about seeing a young kid being brave enough to pet tigers in a zoo in Thailand. On top of sharing the specific details of:
• Who you were with
• When this happened
• Which part of Thailand this zoo might be in
Do also consider sharing about:
• How you felt when you witnessed this sight
• Any thoughts that might be going through your mind
If I were the one witnessing this, I think I would feel shocked and a thought that might be going through my mind would be: “Wow, that young child is so brave to be touching a tiger like that!” or “I wonder why that tiger is so calm and so used to being around humans!”
When you share about the thoughts you might be thinking about, you make the response very real and authentic to the listener!
3. Inject emotions as you share your personal experience
This component is a little different from all the other papers in English. In Oral, it is not just the content that is important, but also the delivery!
It is important to have an interesting experience to share, and to be specific with the details of that experience. However, if you are sharing this experience in a very shy or lethargic way, the experience would not sound the same anymore!
Hence, it is important to also be enthusiastic about what you are sharing! Share the experience with the emotion that you were feeling at that point in time. This will help your listener to feel the same way you did!
For example, if the experience you are sharing about is a trip to Disneyland, you would want to sound excited! This way, your listener would be able to feel just how exciting a trip like that would be!
So, just to wrap up, we have gone through three strategies to sharing a good experience. Now that you know these important tips, let’s try to practise them in our next oral practice! Remember, practice makes perfect!
If you enjoy this video, be sure to like and subscribe! See you next time!
Mr Joel
As a teacher, Mr. Joel believes in nurturing independent learners. He hopes to be able to impart his love for English and particularly, writing, to his students by ensuring that the classroom is a safe space where students can come to learn. Learning should be fun and enjoyable! With that in mind, Mr. Joel believes that every student can excel, and he looks forward to helping his students achieve their best in his classes!
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