A simple, fun idea to practice an important topic in Social English: talking about the town where you live.
Posts Categorized: Social English; Telephoning
59 tips to become a master communicator
American copywriter Robbie Hyman gives tips for writing, presenting, conversation and listening. A great resource for students interested in soft management skills.
Telephoning: one-sided dialogues
Read out one side of a coursebook telephone dialogue and get students to predict what speaker B will say. Then compare with the original.
Put a cut-up audio dialogue into order
Photocopy an audio script and cut it up into double turns (speaker A turn and speaker B turn on same slip of paper). Students put the dialogue into order.
Pause a listening in the middle
You can have a lot of fun by pausing coursebook audio in the middle and asking the students what they think is going to come next (or continuing the dialogue themselves). Here are five mini activities along these lines.
Telephoning RP: arranging a company visit
Students write a schedule for a typical visit to their company by someone from abroad. Then they role-play host and visitor on the phone, making final arrangements for the trip and discussing the schedule. Zero preparation.
Personalized telephone dialogues
Follow up any coursebook work on telephoning by asking your students to write a similar but personalized dialogue based on their real-life calls.
Discussion topics for general speaking practice
Two great sites that list dozens of GE speaking topics – and give ready-made questions for each one!
A Telephoning lesson using just an audio script
This is a favourite activity of mine that involves using a coursebook audio + script but not the exercises in the book that go with them. In fact if you photocopy the audio script you don’t need the book at all.
Social English Throw The Ball! (yes, that’s right, with business people)
Generate quick A/B mini-dialogues in class. Ideal for on-the-spot language feedback and ROLO practice. You’ll be amazed at the language developments/alternatives that come to your mind with the prompt of simple phrases offered by the students.