INTRODUCTION
The paper deals with activities which aim at developing students' speaking skills in ESP
courses. It includes several practical suggestions which are to improve students' awareness of
the language they use, which consequently leads to enhancing their oral performance.
After explaining the motivation leading to innovating oral activities, the paper briefly
mentions several aspects related to research in the area of speaking within ESP, and then
focuses on concrete examples of speaking tasks. It intends to share several activities which
have been lately used in the author's classes of English for legal purposes and can be easily
applied to various other ESP settings.
1. FROM A NEEDS ANALYSIS TO NEW ACTIVITIES
The increased focus on the students’ performance in oral tasks resulted from the needs
analysis survey carried out among students and former graduates of the Faculty of Law at
Masaryk University with the aim of determining relevant current and future needs of law
students and graduates concerning their English language instruction (Chovancová 2013).
Based on the outcomes of the survey the existing syllabi of legal English courses were
modified and a great number of new activities was introduced. The innovations brought more
systematic and thorough approach to developing language and professional skills including
speaking.