TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

Note: This idea comes from Humanising Your Coursebook by Mario Rinvolucri (used with permission). I’ve found it to be a very useful way of practicing clear articulation, splitting sentences into meaningful chunks (“connected speech”), listening, writing, and various vocabulary, spelling and grammatical points.

Suggested levels: strong elementary to advanced.

Aims: to encourage attentive listening; to experiment with English sentence cohesion; to listen for detail.

Preparation: copies of a medium-length coursebook tapescript, cut into four sections of equal size (I find it helps to enlarge the tapescripts to about 115%).

Procedure:

NB: If this is the first time the students have encountered this activity, warn them they are about to make quite a lot of noise, and that their job is to communicate clearly through this noise. You might want to warn teachers in next-door rooms before you do this activity, as well!

Setting-Up

1. Put the students into four small groups or pairs.
2. Ask one student from each group to stand and place them each in a different corner of the room. Give each of these students one of the four different tapescript sections and ask them to divide their section into equal parts, one for them and one for each of the other members of the group at the opposite end of the room.
3. Explain that the standing students will dictate their section of the tapescript to the group at the opposite end of the room, so they should speak clearly and loudly enough to be heard. Tell them not to stop after every word, but to speak words in meaningful groups, like they would if they were having a conversation in English.
4. Tell the sitting students to have a pen and paper ready. Explain that if they can’t hear the standing student, they can say “louder.” They can also instruct the standing student to “rewind” and “repeat.” However, they cannot ask him or her to spell any words, or to repeat just single words. Add that they will also take it in turns to stand and dictate to their group, when the standing student sits down; ask them quickly to agree on an order of speakers.
5. Make sure all students understand that they will all be speaking, and that they will all be expected to write as well. Go over the “louder,” “rewind” and “repeat” controls again.

During the activity

1. Start the activity and monitor clarity and language “chunking” (into meaningful groups of words, rather than pausing after each individual word).

Afterwards

1. Thank the students and asked them how they found the activity. Was it difficult? Easy? OK? Explain the different skills the activity was practicing (see above) and ask if they have any comments about it.
2. Tell the students they will now check what they have written. Play the corresponding coursebook CD/tape track and then have a group feedback session. Did the speakers sound similar? What was most different from what the students had written? What did they find difficult to understand? Which parts had they transcribed accurately and which were easy for them? This feedback can be a useful way of focussing students’ attention on what they know already in the language, and on their own areas of difficulty.
3. Listen again and answer the coursebook questions.