Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03

By the Way ...

Level: intermediate to advanced
Time: l0-l5 minutes
Purpose: to encourage fluency and provoke laughter……
Preparation : Try the technique out at home with some one you know:
One person says two or three things about a topic and then the other person comes in with a phrase like

“ you were saying about….”

“ you mentioned………”

“ apropos of…….”

“ yes………….by the way…… and leads the conversation off

on a completely new tangent eg:

Speaker 1: “ eggs, yes… cooking them,…… really so many different ways of doing it. I mean….. you can poach 'em, fry them, hard-boil them for salad, … oh yes and scrambled eggs, forgot about them."

Speaker 2: “Talking of salads….. I had a tuna salad in that pub , the Golden Lion, last week-end. It had everything in, you name it, it had it, even little squares of crisp fried- bread.”

Speaker 2 can seize on any detail and shoot the conversation in whatever direction she wants. Speaker 1 then does the same thing to her …..and so-on, back and forth.

The disrespectful shifts in focus are often very humorous!

Lesson outline:

1. Demonstrate the technique with one of the students- you take on the role of Speaker 2 above. Make it clear to the student that she should then counter attack, using the same technique.

   Give the class some “ tangent-introducing “ phrases like

   “ You just said something about…..well……”

2. Pair the students and ask them to have a looney conversation like the ones above with 5 or 6 turn swaps.

3. Allow time for whole-class feedback. Ask if the students know anybody who talks in this theme-hopping fashion in real life.

Acknowledgement:

We learnt this technique from Bruno Rinvolucri, aged ten at the time.