Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 4; July 03

Mime the words

Level: Beginner to Elementary
Time : 40-50 minutes in the first class and 40-50 minutes in the second

Preparation

Choose a simple story that some students may already know the gist of, such as a well-known fairy tale. For simplicity's sake write out a version of the story in which most of the action and feelings are expressed from the protagonist's point of view, as in this example:

The little girl put on her coat
she picked up her heavy basket
she went out of the cottage
and walked along the path
she looked up at the green trees
she listened to the birds singing
she whistled happily

Suddenly she saw a beautiful flower
she smiled and knelt down
then she picked up the flower
she looked up
and saw a big bad wolf with long ears and long teeth
she screamed and ran away

She walked and walked and walked
She walked and walked and walked
she got very tired and very hungry
then she saw her grandmother's cottage
she knocked three times on the door
a deep voice said "Come in, my dear!"
she opened the door and went in

The little girl saw an old lady in bed
the old lady had a bonnet on her head
but she had long ears and long teeth ...

In class

1. Get the students sitting comfortably: they should be relaxed and free of bags and writing materials. You also should be seated.

2. Read the story through twice at slow storytelling pace. Offer no explanations.

3. Get the students to stand up. If possible, clear away the furniture. Then ask the students to form up one behind the other in a large circle round the room. Tell them you are going to read the story again, this time sentence by sentence, and ask them to mime what they understand has happened: they should stay in the circle and walk or run behind the person in front when the story requires it.

4. Read the first sentence of the story - in the example given above, one or two students are likely to start miming putting on a coat.

5. Read the same sentence again, so that other students can imitate the mime - this will plant the idea that when they do not know words or phrases in the story they can arrive at them by watching the mime of others. (If no one understands the sentence you have read, then mime it yourself slowly. If the students have had 30-50 hours of English, there will be a number of sentences and words they will not understand: in each case mime the actions yourself. Do not wander off into explanation or paraphrase.)

6. Go through the whole story like his, sentence by sentence, without hurrying the pace. Then repeat the process, the students miming on each occasion.

7. Ask the students to sit down where they can see the blackboard. Invite one student to come out and take dictation from you of the main content words in the first part of the story: while the 'secretary' writes on the blackboard, the others should advise on spelling. Such a dictation, in the example story given, might run:

   put on coat picked up basket went out cottage walked path looked up trees listened to birds

In the next class

1. Revise the story by reading it again sentence by sentence and having the students mime it, as in the first class.

2. Ask the students to get into pairs.

3. Ask one member of each pair to tell the other the story as best s/he can, right through to the end. (Some will make heavy weather of this, but at this level of language learning, that's quite all right.)

4. Now ask the second member of each group to re-tell the story, seeing it in colour and adding in colour words as s/he goes along, e.g. "The little black girl put on her blue coat." (See C/10.)

Acknowledgement

The idea of listening comprehension leading to mime we learnt from Sue Jennings, Remedial Drama, Pitman 1973. The 'seeing in colour' exercise is suggested by Viola Spolin in Improvisation for the Theatre, Pitman 1973.