Activity 84- The Life Soundtrack

Short of creative ideas to make your students talk? How about trying this simple warmer? All you need is a CD with songs and a picture! 

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Skill: Speaking

Material needed: pre-selected song snippets and a picture of someone (ex: taken from a magazine)

Instructions: 

Explain the situation: the person in the picture loves listening to music and for every moment in life he/she has a special soundtrack that relates closely to what he/she is going through.Pair up students and play the selected tracks. Then, they should come up with a very short anecdote explaining what happened in that person's life that made him/her listen to that specific song. Play each song for about 1 minute. 

*Tip: You may wish to play only one song and have pairs work on a more elaborate anecdote or play several songs and have them come up with short explanations/descriptions. 

Picture credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturegeak/5819184201/

Source: Vinicius Lemos

Activity 83- Describe the Scene

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Skill: Speaking

Grammar point: Simple Past

Material needed: pre-selected (Youtube) video snippets 

Instructions:

Pair up students and explain that one of them is going to watch a video containing a short scene with a lot of action. The student who is watching the video should narrate (with as many details as possible)  the scene using the Simple Past. Then, students swap roles and do it again but with a different video. As a wrap up, invite volunteers to narrate the video for the whole class again and take advantage of the activity to discuss a little bit about:

-fluency skills

-vocabulary range

-accuracy

-spontaneity

-rate of speech

Picture credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liewcf/2427204350/

Source: Vinicius Lemos, inspired by Nicky Hockly (Digital Literacies- 13th Braz Tesol National Convention , Rio 2012)

Activity 82- Odd One Out

Here is a nice idea to put critical thinking into practice!

Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Skill: speaking
Material Needed: list of things to be compared

Instructions:

Tell students that they are going to see on the board a list of words and,in groups of 3, they should choose the odd one out. Remind them that there is no single correct answer, anything is possible as long as it makes sense. Give them enough time to discuss and elicit their ideas. 

Some suggestions:
safari - club- airplane
watch- car- pencil
apple- hospital - yellow
book - glasses - cat
English - salad - work
brother- chocolate - laptop
homework - love- water
music - money - internet
gun- tree- hot
giraffe - sandals - oasis

Picture Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthiruth/2651763269/
Source: Vinicius Lemos, inspired by a session given by Lindsay Clandfield at the 13th Braz-Tesol National Convention in Rio de Janeiro, July 2012.