reported speech

Using a song for reported speech.- Madness: Shut up

/ textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

So, this lesson arose from my desire to get students to think about filling in listening gap fills while thinking about the grammar and language of the gap, not just robotically writing what they heard.

I chose this song as it tells a story, or is like two people telling their side of a story to a policeman. V cartoon-like and simple which served the purpose.

I’ve expanded it here to include a little section on reporting verbs and comparatives and also suggested a couple of follow ons.

It obviously fits neatly into a unit on crime or as an extension to reported speech.

PS When I first did this, I didn’t tell them it was a song. It was an exam class and I wanted to surprise them. I am still unconvinced as to whether telling them or not is better. I leave it up to you to decide.

  • Level: Intermediate / Upper-Intermediate / Advanced (at a push)
  • Aim: to focus students on the grammar of the gaps they are filling / to practise listening to language at a faster pace than normally presented.
  • Time: 30mins +

Procedure:

Activating stigmata / pre-listening:

Write “I didn’t do it” on the board. Ask students when they might say this?

Listening:

Ask them to predict what is missing and think of answers that could work.

check in pairs / small groups

Listen and fill in. – listen as many times as needed, I have normally found twice is enough.

Answers

  1. do
  2. listen
  3. remember
  4. T.V. set
  5. watching
  6. married
  7. honest as
  8. less

They will probably make a fuss about number 3 / 5 / 6 as it is not the words used. Explain that the meaning here is more important. (if you are doing it for an exam class they would never do anything as nasty as number 3 but it pays for students to think about the sentence meaning, not just note down the word.)

*You could ask them to listen again and take notes of what is actually said for the answer to each.

grammar focus:

Reporting verbs

Ask the students to underline all of the reporting verbs in the worksheet.

claim / say / ask / boast / deny

Now ask them to turn over to the second page.

This is about getting them to notice the structures used. For most this will be revision

  1. Which are followed by a direct object? ask
  2. Which are followed by that + clause? deny / boast / claim / say

Getting them to think of their own words that are similar is great as it allows you to see what they do / don’t know and also to correct any misconceptions.

Maybe ask them the difference in meaning of the words, or at least clarify it.

‘claims’ often expresses doubt from the speaker about whether what is being said is true and students may not know this.

Comparatives

‘As honest as’

  1. As ________ as – which type of word completes this structure? – adj
  2. If you were going to make it negative, where would ‘not’ go? not as adj as

 

‘The longer the daylight, the less I do wrong’

The + comparative + noun / clause, + the comparative + noun / clause

  1. What does this phrase mean? possibly crime at night, accept different interpretations that work
  2. Why would someone English use this sort of structure? to emphasis something

 

“The more I practice, the luckier I get” – what does this mean?

See if you can write one yourself, e.g. the more I sleep, ….

Follow ups

Ask students to find examples of reporting verbs in newspapers and bring them into class. I normally ask for 5-10 different verbs. It encourages them to be autonomous as well as getting them to notice language. Plus it gets them reading outside of class.

Also, you could ask them to turn the song lyrics into a short news report, recycling the reporting verbs.

Maybe give them a short introduction such as

“police were called yesterday to a burglary in London, when they arrived they caught two men red handed. They arrested both and took them for interview where the first man claimed …

Materials:

 

 

 

Tense review with the Rolling Stones

/ textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

In an attempt to claw back some credibility after ‘the script’ lesson, I bring you a tense review based on an article on the Rolling Stones.  It is a good one to use either as a diagnostic or as a review.  There are also a couple of interesting bits of lexis, should be fairly easy to do from the worksheet and as a warmer there is a listening element made from the direct speech from the text, which you can return to later if you fancy.

And as if that were not enough, there is also going to be a follow up listening lesson with Paint it Black!

This as is often the case with our lessons asks you to train students to notice the grammar and there is some vocab to work out from context.  The worksheet should be pretty easy to follow I hope.

Apologies for the listening, couldn’t find it online so had to do it myself!

Level: Int +

Aim: to review / test tense awareness

Procedure:

Picture: just follow worksheet

Listening: The idea here is to get the students thinking about what is actually being said, and so rather than standard gist questions I have made a task where they have to paraphrase what the person is saying, this will be hard as there will be some vocab that may be unknown in this context ‘cut’ for example.  However, the idea is to start to give them the tools to deal better out of class.  Don’t worry about playing the recording a few times or even, give them a time limit, send it to them via ‘What’s app’ and they can listen as many times as they need in that time.  They can then read to check if they were right.

Reading gist: 

  1. first read to check listening
  2. Read to answer gist questions – answer together

Grammar hunt:

Just as it says really, give students a time limit, you know your class! As i said above, this is either a diagnostic or revision, works for either.  I would go a bit demand high on this though during the feedback, so on the past simple, “why is it past simple? which time phrase is used?” How else could the present continuous be expressed grammatically? that sort of thing.

Reported speech:

Follow the worksheet, as a follow on, i often ask the students to find examples of direct speech by musicians they like and turn them into direct speech and bring it to class next time or email them to me to check.

Vocab from context:

More of our training, I know we put this into almost every lesson, but getting your students comfortable in working out meanings for themselves is important and the more practice they are given, the better they will get.

Listening (the return):

Now get students to listen again to the first recording, they should find it much easier.  Here is where you could highlight some of the following:

  • elision: things like “we wen in”
  • language often used in anecdotes: “we were like”
  • stressed and weak forms
  • sentence stress and where the pauses happen

 

Materials:

AUDIO FILE

 

Quotes – the return

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Good afternoon from a sweltering London (words that don’t often appear together).  As some of you may have seen there is a lesson written months ago on Inversion that feature in quotes.  link below for those who haven’t seen it.

https://textploitationtefl.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/mini-lesson-inversion-in-quotes/

So it will come as no shock that we are going to return to some quotes.  I love them as they are little nuggets of text, great for prediction activities, great for grammar, and often chock full of interesting lexis.  Frankly, what is not to love.

This time rather than focusing on quotes for a particular grammar point, we are going to look at a collection of quotes and take what we can from them.  All sitting comfortably, then I will begin.

Obviously, you can use whichever quotes you want and use the same activities i have just picked out 4 that i felt i could make a lesson from and ones which might engage my students.

The ideas below are a sort of pick and mix of different activities, select the ones that you think would work with your students, the worksheet has some of these activities for the quotes i selected.  But really they should all transfer across.

Level: Int +

Ideas

1. Word Jumble – broken sentences need fixing (see worksheet)

2. Independent research – prediction and a reason for reading. Give the students the quotes and ask them to predict what type of film they came from, get them to chat in groups and explain why they think that and then ask them to try to find out which film they did come from using smart phones or computers. (I am sure that your students will have no problems doing this, but if they are remind them of quote marks.)  When they have found which film they come from ask them to find a summary and does the summary match their prediction?

Obviously, at this point it would be good to get the students to think about what they mean.

3. Grammar hunt – This is pretty easy as it is aimed at Ints, the conditional though may need some scaffolding, such as try to find a phrase that could be replaced by ‘if’.

4. rewriting – The most obvious thing to do with all quotes is to turn them to reported speech.  When I do this I prefer to give them a choice of reporting verbs so that they are reporting the meaning a little and not just relying on said/told.  I always find that students are ok with the backshift, it is the pronouns they tend to forget, so maybe remind them of that.  To raise the level of challenge I have put in extra tests like linkers.

5. Follow up – Encourage the students to watch one of the films.  Or you could watch one, or clips of one in class together – obviously giving the opportunity for work on vocab and pronunciation

Materials: Quotes – the sequel

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/what-to-watch/greatest-quotes/