Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 6; November 03

What did I expect?

Level: lower intermediate to advanced

Pair the students. Person A tells B that she is going to describe some feature of a landscape, eg a lake, a mountain, a river, a beach etc.

Both students immediately start writing. Person A writes five sentences describing the chosen feature. In parallel, and without communicating, Person B writes five sentences she expects the other person to be writing.

The two partners compare their texts.

Ask the students to change partners and to form new pairs. Tell each student to write down a sentence using the present perfect tense.

The partners swap their sentences and each silently reads the other's sentence, imagining how the partner will make it sound when reading it aloud.

Each person now reads their own sentence aloud two or three times. Each tells the other how far his/her auditory expectation was correct.

Ask the students to change partners. Person A is to tell B exactly where and how s/he is going to touch B. The way the touching will happen needs to be accurately described. In turn, Person B tells Person A how s/he will touch them.

Each student closes their eyes and imagines how the other's touch will feel.

Person A touches Person B, then B touches A.
Each tells their partner the precise differences between the expectation and the reality.

Note: Expectations will often colour a person's perception in a communication situation and this activity gets students exploring the difference between expectation and what actually happens.

Acknowledgement: We learnt this technique from Cinzia Usai on a Pilgrims summer course in 2003.