We, as teachers, always do our best to encourage our students to practice and develop their speaking skills as much as possible by setting up tasks on various topics.
Nevertheless, some topics have been identified by publishers as causes of controversy, especially if you work with learners from different cultures and might not be fully aware of what subjects you should not bring up. There are also other considerations beyond cultural sensitivity, such as the age and maturity of the students.
The topics listed below are also at risk of being refused to adopt by schools and governments, considering them as offending ones.
There’s an acronym/mnemonics technique (which is also a real word) that will make it easier for you to memorize these words/topics:
PARSNIP
P – Politics
A – Alcohol
R – Religion
S – Sex
N – Narcotics
I – -isms (e.g., communism, atheism, terrorism)
P – Pork (in radical Muslim cultures)
In Israel, it is not allowed to have any images or videos of women in teaching materials if your learners are ultra-orthodox men.
In some cases, the prerogative may depend on a teacher who knows their students better than any publisher on how and when it would be appropriate to discuss these topics in a sensitive way.
Another good idea would be to conduct a survey of what ideas your learners are interested in and open to discussing.
There can be other subjects that you should be careful with discussing as well, so it’s always a good idea to familiarize yourself at least a little bit with the culture where your student(s) come from not to get yourself into trouble!
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