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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 2; March 03
One word conversations
Before Class: No preparation required
Aim: make students aware of features of spoken grammar, using lexis rather than grammar when speaking, use of intonation to convey meaning
Time: 25 minutes
Procedure:
- Get students to prepare a dialogue in pairs to be read out to whole class. Each utterance should have one word and one word only.
- When students are ready get them to read their dialogues out loud
Example of student text
- Possible?
- No.
- Mm.
- No
- Please.
- Oh.
- Yes?
- Well.
- Thanks.
Variations:
- Instead of presenting the dialogues in front of the class, students circulate their dialogues and read them in pairs. In this way they get more practice in intonation.
- Find a common frame for all the dialogues and turn them into a play the students can present in front of the parents or the rest of the school.
Rationale: This exercise is artificial but the restriction gives a very natural result. It illustrates that lexis is often used at the expense of grammar when speaking. The reading aloud forces students' awareness of the importance of intonation in conveying meaning.