The activities described in the paper come from lessons of legal English at the Faculty of Law
for the first and second-grade undergraduates whose level of English is B1-C1 according to
the CEFR. The tasks concentrate on developing the students’ abilities to present clear and
detailed descriptions, to explain their viewpoints and to compare the advantages and
disadvantages of various options, which corresponds to the target level of B2 which the
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students are to achieve after finishing the course. Moreover, the activities are implemented
into professional or academic settings, which are the areas referred to as two communication
contexts inevitable for ESP students (Feak 2013: 42).
The activities cover discussions, role plays and individual short deliveries set as home
assignments. Presentations, as one large area of communicative activities, which is also part
of the syllabi, have been omitted since they would deserve a paper of its own. Discussions and
role pays are usually intended as fluency practice related to expressing ideas and presenting
advantages and disadvantages, individual speaking tasks can concentrate on improving the
accuracy. Innovative features in the new syllabi assigned a new role to students by including
them into the feedback and evaluation.
2. RESEARCH IN SPEAKING
There has not been much research published in the area of developing speaking skills in ESP,