Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03

Christiane Van Opdenbosch, Dutch teacher at IEPSCF, Belgium
christiane.vanopdenbosch@skynet.be

Level: beginners
( this activity comes after Visualising Sounds)
Language Focus: aural discrimination, concentration, pronunciation and reading skills
Time: 10 minutes
Materials: cards with lists of five basic words, that contain a sound the students tend to get wrong.
Preparation: Select 4 words containing one sound and a fifth word with an odd-man-out sound.
Technique: Listen and identify the odd-man-out word.
Aim: To edge towards self-correction and to build-up self-confidence

Procedure:

I read a list of 5 words, 4 of them containing one identical sound. The students have to pick the odd sound and explain why it does not belong in the list.

I put each list of words on a separate card. I only read out 7 or 8 lists of words at a time.

In the first session with this technique we only work on two sounds.

From the second session on, I select a wider range of sounds, vowels, diphthongs and consonants.

In later sessions, I take the same cards again, work on them with the whole class, mixing up all types of difficulty.

In the final stage of the activity, later on in the course, the students work on the cards independently, in small groups.

Note: students enjoy the activity and it is not a time-consuming one.