Lessons

Fillers for fluency

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Ok, so a lesson I first did a long time ago and one that i have tweaked a few times since.  It is a bit of a test-teach-test lesson and I often find that it really does do a good job of making your students sound more natural. You will need to either record the two texts yourself or email and get them from us that way. Level: pre Int upwards ( I have used this with CAE classes) Time: 40mins-1hr Main aim 

  • To help students converse more naturally by using discourse markers and back-channelling.

Subsidiary aim

  • To raise awareness of the sub-skills used by fluent speakers in discourse.
  • To practise discussions by giving students free speaking practice.
  • To practise listening.

Procedure:

1 Test: students are given  a question, think about it and generate ideas,  and then record themselves answering it in pairs together.  The recording is saved to be used later in the lesson.

2 Models: Students are played first dialogue and then second and asked to discuss which sounds more natural. Students are asked why they think it is more natural? You may need to play the recording twice.  Group feedback on which is more natural. 1st one is more natural and you need to make sure students can then say why – use of fillers / backchanelling etc.

3 Target language: Students given tapescript of the listening with gaps for featured target language. (May need to listen to recording 1 again)

  • Check with completed version of the tapescript which contains one mistake to test the students listening and raise the level of challenge.

4. Matching meanings:

  • Students match discourse markers with given meanings. These can be cut up to help engage kinaesthetic learners.

Feedback in the form of a matching exercise on the IWB.

5. Controlled practice

  • Students work in pairs to add discourse markers to a question that they answered in stage one and record it.

Students listen to compare their conversation and decide which sounds more natural.

7. Reflection: Students give feedback on which conversation sounded most natural

Materials:

1. fillers-for-fluency-1

2. Recording 1 – 

Recording 2 – 

Set texts – go on, set a text!

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So, CPE is the last one standing, the set texts having been taken away from the FCE and CAE exams as no one answered the questions on them.  Well, some of my students did, and even if they didn’t, reading the set text gave us the chance to practice lots of other skills as well as the obvious benefits of students reading.

When I first started teaching I encouraged my students to read and the first advanced class I taught we read a book together, I have also used audiobooks in class for extended listening practice.  To be honest, some of those were not so successful, but I think that was a failing with me as a teacher, I just wasn’t experienced enough to get the most out of the materials.  Last term I taught CPE, and we read Howards End by Forster and as well as note taking, building character profiles, discussing themes etc. we also did a variety of other things.

I’ve put ideas for some of them below, give them a go, they give the reading much more focus.

  • Turning a page of it into a part 1, 2, 3 Use of English, classic but reliable fall back and a chance to get the tip ex out! Or, if you are very smart try to copy and paste from a digital version.  With my last CAE class last year, I wrote summaries of the chapters and then made them into different parts of the paper.
  • Getting students to create their own reading parts of the exam, for example giving them a section and getting them to write multiple choice questions for it.
  • Cutting up the text and seeing if they can put it back into order using logical sequencing (you have to check that you can do this yourself).  Practices reading part 2
  • Showing the film of the book (if there is one) and getting the students to review it.  With the film there are obviously lots of opportunity to work on pronunciation as you already have a model to work from.
  • Summary writing of sections of the text will help them write concisely and learn how to paraphrase. Summary writing is also a necessary skill for CPEs.
  • Encourage students to make a set text dictionary, especially useful if they can list page numbers and example sentences, to help build vocab.
  • Do a Grammar hunt in a particular piece of text, students search for Conditionals, participle clauses, passives etc to build grammar awareness.
  • Vocabulary from the context, students match synonyms, practises scanning as well as building their vocabularies.
  • Rewriting some of it into a different register, for example if you have a book with rather formal text it can be fun to get them working in pairs to rewrite it in an informal way.
  • Using the direct speech for students to practice intonation and word and sentence stress, get them to record themselves, practice it, get them to think about changes in meaning depending on where the stress is and to think how it should be said, it is also really good to get students to think about where phrases should end and where they should breathe, for many, this is a real challenge and encouraging them to think about it can really help, especially if you do a little of this often.  Recording again after working at it gives students the opportunity to really see progress and who doesn’t like that?

Many students don’t want to read, so short stories or any form of text can be used for a lot of these activities, but I do think that for many students the satisfaction of reading a story and understanding it, along with the practice that they have put in by reading it can make a real difference to their confidence as well as level.

Just always remember to stress why it will be useful for them and what skills you are practising!

Writing skills: Punctuation

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So if you’ve read many of our other blog posts, you’ve probably come across one or the other of us banging on about how writing skills don’t necessarily translate from a student’s L1. In my experience this is never more true than with punctuation, which strangely enough is something that we tend to ignore for the most part in the classroom. It’s something small and easily teachable that can have a huge effect on the target reader. Incorrect punctuation is immediately noticeable for a reader and can be quite off-putting (hahahaha, I hope I remember to read over this post very carefully before I put it up, it’s probably riddled with bad punctuation).

Just the other day I taught a lesson containing some phrasal verbs. As an optional revision exercise, I asked the students to write a short story containing 5 of the phrasal verbs. I did say it was optional but being the motivated little wonders they are, they all did it and had emailed me by the end of the day. Thankfully, they’d done really well and they’d nailed the usage of the phrasal verbs (more or less) but what stuck out in every story was the punctuation. It wasn’t that there was a lack of it, it was everywhere, as if they’d arbitrarily just flung commas and fullstops at their page after they’d written it.

It was my fault really as I’d never taught them anything about punctuation. So for the next class I went in with the following  lesson and their next piece of writing was much better.

Level: Elementary and up

Time: 1 hour

Materials: Punctuation (City or Country)

Procedure:

(1)

Get their juices flowing:

Just to get them thinking about it, give them a minute to discuss the city versus the countryside. Then hand out the sheet (you might want to fold it so that they can only see the text at the top) and ask them if they agree with the opinion in the box. This should lull them into a false sense of security before you spring the writing skills part on them.

(2) 

The Text:

Now that they’ve read and discussed the little text, get them to take a slightly closer look at it. Have them discuss the questions underneath. What you’re going for here is that it’s just one long sentence with no clear point and too many commas. This can be quite common in student writing.

I’d discuss this a little as a class then at this point I think it’s important to clear up the name and use of common features of punctuation. Direct the students to the box at the bottom of the page and have them match up the names. They can often have trouble with this. I’d then take a few minutes to discuss their uses and allow students to take notes. Some interesting things that may come up are:

  • In a lot of languages ellipsis (…) can be used to mean etc. However, in English it’s used to signal a long pause or interruption.
  • Colons are often used in stories to signal direct speech. This is less common in English.
  • Semi-colons are sadly dying out in English, especially everyday writing but they can be a lot more common in language like Spanish or Italian. This can lead to overly lengthy sentences, which doesn’t come across well in English writing.
  • Students will often want to put full stops before “and”, “but” and “because”. While this is obviously not impossible in English, it can lead to short and unnatural sentences in student writing.

(3) 

Rewriting:

In pairs get your students to decide how they could improve the short text b punctuating it. Tell them that if they like they can remove or alter contractions to make it read better but that they shouldn’t change any other language. When they’re finished, discuss as a class.

I’d imagine you’re hoping for something like this:

The best thing about cities is the night life because you can go out and you can go to the pubs any time you like. Also, if you want to, you can get a night bus home at 4:00 in the morning if you have stayed out late. However, sometimes the night buses are very slow so you don’t get home until about 5:00 in the morning and that’s almost the next day.

But you may decide that another variation works better.

(4)

Practice:

Get the students to write their own opinion in the space at the bottom focusing carefully on punctuation. when they’re finished, let them compare with a partner and encourage peer correction. You could even put them up around the room and allow students to move around in pairs commenting on the punctuation and then feedback as a class.

The idea is to really get them thinking about how it can have a negative affect on the reader or make a text flow more easily.

Using Articles for Articles

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So here is another activity that can be used more as revision, or even to test knowledge of a grammar point, to see if it needs teaching.

It is something I tried out a couple of weeks ago and my class responded really well to it.  Since then, there has been a noticeable improvement in their work with articles. They don’t always get them right, but they are much better at self correction.  In my view, that is a big step in the right direction, plus it encourages learner autonomy, which is always a good thing.

I set this as homework, but you could ask students to do it in pairs too and I have added a couple of follow on activities that you could do to make it a whole lesson rather than just a practise activity.

Procedure

1. Give the students a set of rules for when to use articles (this one is adapted from one in the back of Gold Advanced).

The definite article (1)

1.1 when there is only one of something

1.2 to talk about previously mentioned things

1.3 to talk about a generic class of things

1.4 with national groups

1.5 with adjectives used as nouns

The indefinite article (2)

2.1 with singular countable nouns referring to something general / non-specific

2.2 to replace one with numbers e.g. a hundred

Zero article (3)

3.1 uncountable, plural and abstract nouns in general

3.2 countries, continents, cities

3.3 mountains and lakes

 

2. Ask students to find a short article from a newspaper, or online, paper is better though for this.

3. Tell them that they have to underline all of the examples of articles in the text and then match them to one of the numbers above.

4. Ask them to show a classmate and they can compare, while you monitor to assist as needed.

5. Group feedback and check in case of any difficulties.

Extension activities

a) To encourage critical thinking skills you could ask students to summarise the text within a set word limit, e.g. 50 words.  The could plan it by selecting the key points and focus on writing those.

They could also tell a partner about the article or peer teach any interesting vocab they have found.

b) Ask students to look back through their own work and to try to correct mistakes.

 

So there it is, try it out and let us know what you think.

 

 

 

 

When is the future not the future? When it’s in the past of course!

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Apologies for the title…couldn’t resist. 

So, this is a lesson I taught recently and had a lot of fun doing it. The idea was to encourage students to use the future in the past to justify their actions but also to work on comprehension. So often our comprehension exercises are based largely on a student’s ability to skim and scan. I wanted to get them looking further, to read between the lines, to really identify the subtleties of language and to understand exactly what the speaker was saying.

Level: Intermediate and above

Time: 1 – 2 hours (depending on error correction and level of the group)

Materials: argument

Procedure (I think the worksheet is pretty self-explanatory but I’ve highlighted a few ideas you can try out when you’re teaching it)

1

Tell the students you’ve just had a fight with your boyfriend / girlfriend (you may need to change the text slightly depending on your situation). Ask them to think of some of the typical arguments couples might have. (It’s probably useful to start building “argument” language and vocab here, using what the students give you. I find that constructions such as, “he’s always leaving the toilet seat up” tend to come up at this point).

2

Students read the text quickly and discuss the problem in small groups.

3

At this point, tell the students you want them to imagine that they are no longer your students, they are your friends. You have just told them what they have read and they are free to ask you any clarification questions they want but no language questions. This encourages them to dig deeper without focusing on what each word/phrase means. You can make up the answers for yourself and feel free to alter the text to make it suit your needs.

       e.g.

– Did you intend to tell your girlfriend about the meeting?

– How did she find out you had met her?

4

Now that students have clarified what they wanted to, leave them to deal with the comprehension questions and then discuss as a class. These questions are open to interpretation.

5

Get students to underline any examples of future in the past (e.g. was going to / was about to). Pull them out and have a look at the structures together. I wouldn’t worry about pronunciation at this point as it will come up later. You might want to get them to write a few sample sentences to ensure they understand it. I use the example from earlier in the lesson.

– “Why did you leave the toilet seat up?” / “Well I was going to put it down….”

6

Let the students work away on the vocab questions, really digging deep into the text and then discuss as a class.

7

To practise all of the language from the lesson, tell the students they’re going to have the argument with their partners. Give each person a role and then give them a few minutes to prepare some sentences they will say to their boy/girlfriend in the argument. Encourage them to use any language that was on the handout or that has come up in the lesson.

8

Get them out of their seats and let them argue away. Note errors of the target language on the board. Once the arguments are finished, students return to their seats and correct the errors as a group.

Now it’s time for pronunciation. Have a look at the chunks of language below and drill them with your students.

“I was going to” = /əwəzgənə/

“I was about to” = /aɪwəzəbaʊtə/

Now get them up to have the same argument with another student and when they’re finished you can choose to give feedback on errors, vocab, pron or whatever your heart desires. Feel free to change the roles/situation and have them repeat similar arguments. This slight change will keep the activity from becoming tired and boring and will allow them to really focus on upgrading their language with the new language and the pronunciation, something that they won’t do if they haven’t had a chance to try the activity a few times.

Narrative tenses

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This lesson is a nice follow up after you’ve taught the narrative tenses. I dug it out the other day and taught it to a class and it went really well so I thought I’d share it here. It’s pretty straight forward procedure-wise but it does look at the difference between different text types and allows for student creativity as well…which is always nice.

You could change it around a little and make it easier for lower levels by removing the past perfects and also, there’s a cheeky little passive in there as well to push the higher levels. I like to do it a week or so after I’ve taught the narrative tenses as a nice little review and consolidation but you can do it immediately afterwards as practice as well.

Level: Pre-intermediate and above

Materials: Cinema Queue – Narrative Tenses

 Procedure:

(1)

Intro

It’s simple really, the idea is that you want them to have really thought about the story first before they tackle the grammar. You’ll really have to check your instructions here because in my experience students physically cannot ignore a gapfill exercise if you put it in front of them.

Tell them you’re going to give them part of a whole story and you want them to read through it, ignoring the gaps and then decide what happened to James. Encourage them to be as imaginative as possible as this will help later.

Let them discuss it in groups and then feedback as a whole class. Feel free to put their ideas on the board and feed them some language they’re struggling with as it will all help them later on.

(2) 

Narrative Tenses

At this point, I now let them tackle the gaps. I encourage them to do this in pairs or small groups and be very emphatic about the fact that if they disagree, they’re to explain why and discuss it as a group. You could also let them know that in some situations two answers might be possible. (e.g. “Was being shown” could be “was showing” in the cinema).

Now I like to switch the groups around a bit and get them to reconsider their answers as very often students tend to do things they “know” are wrong. e.g. using the present simple when they clearly know it’s the past. Mixing up the groups gives fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. Again, highlight that if the answers are different they should discuss them.

finally, allow them to turn over the page so that they can check their answers. Get them to highlight the ones they got wrong and discuss why they got them wrong. Then deal with these issues as a whole class.

(3) 

The Text Message

This section can be done before the previous one if you like but I usually do it in this order.

Going back to their ideas of what happened to James, get your students to write the text message from James to Ben in the box provided. At this point I wouldn’t give them any pointers just let them at it, using any language you fed them earlier.

You’ll notice they probably use overly formal language or write overly long texts but it also gives them a chance to practise their narrative tense should they choose to.

Correct the texts as a class, focusing on formality and highlighting the differences between a text and a story.

(4) 

Follow-up / Homework

Finally, send them off for homework to write the story from James’ point of view. I’d recommend a little bit of peer correction at the beginning of the next class to really nail down these tenses as we tend to find it very difficult to find our own mistakes in a second language.

(5)

Optional Extra Activities

So, if you find they’re not too bored with the story by now. Here’s a few extra things you could look at:

  1. Turning direct speech into reported speech.
  2. Examining punctuation in stories, direct speech.
  3. Look at the features of connected speech in the direct speech. I suggest the weak forms e.g. “Are you talking to me?” becomes /əjuːtɔːkɪntəmiː/.

 

Writing a Film Review – Low level

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I recently did a CPD session on teaching writing skills and dragged out all of my old writing lessons. This was a lesson I did with a PET class once but it works for any elementary or pre-intermediate class. A low elementary group might have some trouble with it but with some scaffolding they would cope. Also, it works with any review you could find or write yourself so please do feel free to change the film, I just always liked the idea of a butch Santa Claus.

What I’ve found over the years is that very often we assume writing sub-skills like paragraphing, organisation and punctuation will naturally translate from a student’s own language. However, this is not always the case. Too often, students see writing as a vehicle for showing off their vocabulary and grammar and ignore what they know about good writing in their own language. This lesson draws attention to structure and paragraphing at a low level which I feel is extremely important.

The worksheet is laid out quite easily for teaching so I’ve just added some tips and ideas for teaching in the procedure instead of going into massive detail.

Material: Writing a Film Review – Rise of the Guardians

Level: Elementary – Intermediate

Procedure:

(1)

Getting them interested

The opening discussion questions here should serve to get the students interested in the topic. By monitoring carefully you can also be filling the board with errors and interesting language that emerges and will be useful for the students later on. Really focus on descriptive adjectives and nouns to describe films.

(2)

Activate Ye Olde Schemata

I think it’s important to get them thinking. In question 2 on the worksheet, the students are essentially preparing themselves to read by predicting what kind of information will be in there.

(3)

Engaging with the text

It’s important to give them a chance to not just read the text for language but to read it critically. The discussion questions in Q3  are designed to encourage this.

You may also notice I haven’t really given any comprehension questions. You could add them if you wanted but I don’t think that’s really the aim here. I want them focusing on content, organisation and thinking about the text as a whole.

(4)

Vocabulary focus

I do think it’s important to highlight that reviews will be rich in adjectives and adverbs. At this point I usually go back to the board from the beginning of the class and highlight the adj and adv that came up in Q1. I also encourage them to give me synonyms and opposites of the adjectives we have. It’s all preparing them for what’s to come later / for homework.

(5)

Organisation

Q5 + 6 can be done together but I think it’s nice for the students to go back and see that their predictions were correct and then to really focus on the order.

(6) 

Follow-up

Obviously we now want the students to go off and write a review. This can be done for homework if you like or it can be done collaboratively in class. If it’s done for homework, I would set aside some time for peer-correction at the beginning of the next lesson. I would prepare a review checklist to encourage students to edit their work. something like this;

  • Have you used appropriate paragraphs?
  • Have you used appropriate adjectives?
  • Does your title catch the reader’s attention?
  • Did you give your opinion at the end?
  • Did you give some information about the film?

The idea being that if they have answered YES to all of the questions, they have an appropriate review. If they haven’t , they have some editing to do before they give it in as a finished piece of work.

If you decide to do it in class collaboratively, you could choose a film they’ve all seen and assign each pair of students a paragraph. Then put them all together at the end. This really highlights the importance of paragraphing and having one point per paragraph.

A nice and easy recipe for a simple lesson.

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I’ve always liked this lesson. It’s simple and there are no frills or anything. It just works every time and students seem to enjoy it. I decided to do it after I asked a Thai student to explain how to cook a Pad Thai. Basically, he started a game of charades interspersed with odd instructions and food I’d never heard of…he was an upper intermediate student.

This lesson can be done with any level from Elementary upwards but I would expect it to be revision for your average upper int or advanced student. My favourite thing about it is that there’s very little teacher talking time other than giving instructions, most of it is students working away and chatting…whoop whoop!!!

Materials:

  1. Yummy chicken in my belly – Recipe (You can use any recipe really and just change the pics)
  2. cooking vocab pictures – Photos (if you don’t like them, feel free to choose your own)

Procedure:

(1)

Test

Ask your students to think of a traditional dish from their country and to explain how they make it to their partners. Let them have a few minutes of this while you sit back and enjoy as the charades unfolds, then stop them and say OK OK OK, let’s come back to this later on guys.

(2)

Teach

  • Display the cooking pictures on the board and in pairs ask the students to think of the verb.
  • After a few minutes, hand out the recipe. Get them to check their verbs and add/correct any they didn’t know.
  • Don’t let them use their dictionaries. They should be able to work most of it out based on context and their knowledge of the genre (are recipes a genre? hmmm…today they are).
  • Meanwhile, write up all of the phonemics on the board for the verbs and any other pieces of vocab they are having difficulty with.
  • When they’re ready you can check they’ve got the verbs and pictures correct and then get them to match the phonemics on the board to the words in the recipe. A nice bit of drilling never goes astray either.

(3)

Test

Bring them back to their first activity and ask them now with their new-found verbs to explain how their dish is made to their partner. Choose one from each group to share with the class and do any error correction you so desire.

(4) 

Follow Up

What I find is that even though by the end of the lesson the students have been staring at the recipe for ages, they very often ignore the imperative nature of recipes. This is not something that needs much teaching but it’s good to draw their attention to it. Just ask them what grammar is used in the recipe and in what other situations can we use it.

After that I like to get the students to write up their recipes and make a class recipe book for the noticeboard in the class. It’s nice to have something at the end that they have produced and can look back on.

These recipes can be used to encourage peer-correction, collaboration, independent research skills or planning and editing skills.

If you’d like any more detail on any of this just leave a comment and I’d be happy to reply.

You’ve got Voicemail

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So this lesson is based on something I did for my DELTA many years ago.  Back then I had to phone each of them and leave them all a little voice mail message.  Now, just create a what’s app group and share it.  Much easier, and less time consuming.

Why make it a voice mail, well a lot of the listening practice that we do as teachers involves us playing the text to them, in the real world they normally only hear things once, unless watching T.V. The exception is voice mail, I think everyone has had to listen to a voice mail a few times to get a long number or to catch a name.  So in this lesson, students can listen as many times as they want, the power is in their hands. Literally!

The context for this is looking for a flat, which is something many students may have had some personal experience of, especially living abroad.  One of the main focuses here is on prediction and script work, getting students to think before listening about what information they really expect to hear.

Also be prepared for the fact that a lot of house vocab can come up in the discussion stage, monitor and board the language that you think would be beneficial for the whole class.

  • Time: 30-60mins + follow on activity
  • Level: Int +
  • Aim:  To help students listen better for specific information in a natural context
  • Sub aim:  To raise awareness of stressed and weak forms in natural speech patterns.

 Procedure

Before going into the classroom you will need to have recorded the text, either yourself or using someone else – it is important to make sure it is natural sounding.

1. The context: Explain to students that the context is that they have contacted an estate agent looking for a flat for them and a friend. They have been told about two, property A and property B.  You can show them the details to the property at this point and ask them to discuss with partners what they think and which place they would prefer to live in and why.

2. Prediction: Tell students that they are going to get an answerphone message in a minute about another house on their phones.  Get them to predict what might be said, what vocab they expect to hear and also if there is any grammar that they think will be used in the recording.

3. Strong and weak forms: Write the first line of the message on the board

“Hi , this is (name) calling from Fairhouse”

Ask the students, in pairs/groups, to think about which words they would expect to hear clearly, if you have done some work with them previously, they should be able to identify them, if not, then give them time and help when monitoring.

Play the 1st line of the recording only and ask students to see which words are stressed

“Hi , this is (name) calling from Fairhouse”

Say only the stressed words and ask if they can understand the meaning of the sentence

Hi, (name) calling Fairhouse

Get the students to reflect on why those words are stressed and why the others aren’t – ie, it gives meaning, the others don’t.

Tell students that it will be important to listen out for only the key information while doing the task.

4. Note taking: Get students to reflect back on what information they expect to hear and then share the message with them using what’s app or another similar method.  Hand out the questions on the worksheet and let them listen for the answers. Give them 3-5 minutes, remember the whole point is that they can listen as many times as they want.

Hand out the final property information sheet (C) and now ask the students if they would change their first choice of property and in pairs/groups ask them to discuss this and why?

5. Language focus:  Ask the students to listen again and make a note of any grammar structures they hear used.  They should hopefully notice the repeated use of conditionals.

Then ask if they can write them down – a bit of dictation.  Encourage them to listen only twice and then try to reconstruct the rest of the conditional with a partner (dictagloss).

Then pass on the small section on function or put the information on a board.

(this section is short as I don’t want conditionals to be the focus of the lesson, if you want, feel free to go into much more detail on them)

6. Pronunciation: Ask students what happens to the first ‘I’ in if when saying a conditional.

Write this on the board

/faɪ wə juː/

explain that the first sound often vanishes when native speakers talk quickly.  Highlight the fact they therefore need to be prepared for this while listening.

Get them with partners to practise the pronunciation of the three conditional sentences or drill chorally, whichever you prefer or more importantly your class respond best to.

7. Reflection: Place students in small groups / pairs and ask them to think about what different aspects of listening skills they have focused on and why.  Then share as a group discussion.

Optional

8.  Follow up: Ask students to make notes for a reply to the estate agent explaining which house(s) they would like to view and putting forwards ideas for a time. Remind them of the use of conditionals for giving choices. Once they have ideas, get them to record it, don’t worry about mistakes at this point.

Ask them to listen, focusing on their pronunciation and get them to think about two parts they could improve.  Ask them to record again, trying to improve those two things. When they have done this and are happy, ask them to send the recordings to you.

Listen to them, make some notes on the different recordings and work on any issues in forthcoming lessons.

 

Materials:

Property details

worksheet 1

 

Vox Pop

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I was teaching this week and was wondering what I could do as a warmer for a coming class on clothes and fashion.  As I walked from my classroom to the teacher’s room, it hit me.  Mini interviews with other teachers on what my clothes said about me.  So I pulled out my phone and started interviewing colleagues.

30 minutes later, I played them in class and they were a great mine of vocab and also grammar, used naturally, with lots of lovely aspects of pron there too.  Sometimes, it is easy to forget how easy it is to make our own listening exercises.  All you need is a phone with a record function, preferably some speakers to play it through,  and someone to speak.  Happy days.

Procedure:

1. Choose a question: mine was just “what do my clothes say about me?” Then record as many answers as you want / need, for the record, I chose 4 people and the total time for the recording came to just over 1 minute.

2. Play the recording: I played the recording three times and asked them to one of these each time:

  • listen for the opinions of each speaker and then summarise them.
  • Write down any interesting vocab that they heard, with a focus on adjectives.
  • Write down any grammar they heard

the language that came up was great – teachers tend to have quite large ranges.

These were all in the 1st speakers answer, which was 15 seconds long.

“Maybe you choose things which suit you, which is good”

“if it’s work attire, then, it’s probably not what you would wear normally outside of work”

“you might have a slightly geeky looks sometimes”

There is so much you could do with any of those, but conditionals, modals and relative clauses came up regularly in the answers. Good to provide a model for students and proof that what we teach them does get used by people every day, not just in course materials.

Fillers could also be worth looking at, I chose not to as I was only looking for a 20minute activity

However, my favourite answer was “it makes you look like a pretentious knob”.  you can’t say fairer than that!

3. (optional) Focus on any elements of connected speech that come up, or stressed / unstressed words

4. Students can either: ask each other the same question, or if you are feeling brave, send them out to interview other people about their clothes, it’s up to you and go with whatever will work best with your class.  But, do record it and ask students to listen back for the same things as above.

That’s all folks, let us know if there were any great questions you used.