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TitleWhat did he/she say? Setting up a date
SourceCASLS Activity of the Week
Body

Renée Marshall is an International Programs Specialist at CASLS.

As a teacher one of the most difficult tasks I find are listening tasks. How often in our every day lives do we listen to something and then answer multiple choice questions about it? Not very often. But that is what we ask our language learners to do most of the time after listening to something. Typically, we use information we gain from listening in order to do something—make a decision, write a paper, respond. This activity has students listen to a voice message from a new date and craft a response. The activity incorporates use of LinguaFolio Online (LFO) but can be used without it.

Learning objectives: Students will be able to…

  •     recognize a date, time and place for meeting.
  •     recognize a greeting and a leave-taking in a voice message.
  •     respond to an invitation reconfirming the date, time and place.
  •     greet and leave people in a polite way in a voice message.

Modes: Interpretive listening and Interpersonal communication - Novice-Mid

Materials needed: Handout, devices or computers to upload recording to LFO (if using), two voice messages

Procedure

  1. Get the conversation going by asking learners how they meet new people. Do they use online dating websites/applications? Which ones?
  2. Introduce the situation (see handout). Pass out handout to learners and have them first look over the Can Do statements. Have them indicate either in LFO and/or on the paper where they feel their ability level is before beginning the activity.
  3. Have learners complete the before-listening by themselves first and then share as a class. You may want to review/point out phrases in the L2 that are common/useful.
  4. Have learners pair off into groups of two. One person is #1 and one is #2.
  5. Play two recordings (you can do this as a class or each individual student or group has a device to listen to), one for person #1 and one for person #2. They should each be different variations of a similar invitation. Indicate that learners should complete the while-listening task on the handout. Play the recording as many times as you see fit. In a real life situation, they would be able to play the voice message as many times as they want to.
  6. In their pairs, have learner #1 tell learner #2 (their best friend) what happened. What did he/she say!!! Together they decide how to respond and learner #1 records their voice message to send to their date reiterating the time and place of meeting. Now they switch and learner #2 tells learner #1 about their message, and they decide how to respond and record it. If using LFO have students upload their voice message to LFO.

Notes/Adaptations: It might be hard to find a voice message, so you will most likely have to make two of them yourself, with a greeting and then an invitation to a date, including time, date and location, as well as a closing. If your students are younger and you don’t want to use a dating site, you could just say a new friend and use some other chatting website/application.

Publishdate2017-01-23 02:15:04