Activity 12: creating a listening activity

Listening Acitivity creation.


As we were asked to create a listening activity and to provide the clip I came up with the following idea:

Listening Activity

Level: intermediate onwards.

Aim: work on pronunciation.

Before: The teacher asks students if they know what “tongue twisters” are. S/he can give an example in English, so the students will understand exactly what they are. Then, the teacher gives the students a paper with the following text:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Activity: At this point, the students will be asked to try to read it aloud. It will sound as a mess in class, but they will have fun trying to say it. Afterwards, the teacher will play the following sound track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnStAXLw4LY&feature=related (it is a song with the Peter Piper tongue twister). As an option, the teacher can also record his/her own voice reciting a tongue twister of his/her own choice.

If the teacher wants, s/he can ask the students if they want to try to sing it together.

After: The teacher choose a couple of tongue twisters from the following link: http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm and ask the students to learn by heart the one they like the most, reminding they will be asked to recite it in class the next day.


Afterwards, we were required to create exercises with HotPotatoes based on the listening activity we have created:

Since there were not too many options considering the type of activity I created, I decided the best option would be to do a puzzle.

I really found Hot Ptatoes a very good tool. I have used crosswords quite often in my lessons and I always found it difficult and most of the times really boring to create them by myself. I am sure I will use it from now on!