The Teacher James

James Taylor

,
6 comments on (Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas: Speech Bubbles

(Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas: Speech Bubbles

(Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas was an idea originally conceived by Sandy Millin, and shared on her blog of the same name. In her words…

I will post a prompt for you to exercise your teaching muscles by making suggestions on how you could use it in class. All ideas are welcome – there are no wrong answers! Together we’ll build up a bank of inspiration for you to turn to whenever you’re stuck.

I always loved this idea, so I’ve decided to steal it for my own blog (with Sandy’s permission, of course!)

For this month’s idea, I present… speech bubbles!

So how would use these cardboard speech bubbles with your students? Leave a comment below with your suggestion and in a few days, I’ll add a suggestion of my own.

Update

Here’s a suggestion for you. As someone who mainly teaches intermediate and advanced students one-to-one, I have to deal with a lot of fossilised errors. These are errors that students make after having learnt how to do correctly, but they just keep making. Basically, they are things that they shouldn’t do anymore but do anyway. For my Brazilian students this includes things like confusing he and she, the pronunciation of -ed endings (work-id, knock-id etc), and saying one instead of a or an, as one student of mine in particular has the habit of doing.

Rather than interrupting them verbally every time they make this error, instead I have some of these cards on the table between us:

If they make one of these mistakes, I will, without saying anything, point to the error which student takes as a cue to reformulate the sentence correctly. It’s a subtle way of correcting without interrupting the flow of the student’s speech too much and it facilitates the repetition that you need when trying to correct fossilised errors. And they can be used with online students too by holding them up in front of the camera.

For more great (Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas, see the comments below!

James Taylor's avatar

Posted by:

James Taylor

James Taylor is a DELTA qualified EFL teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer and podcast producer based in Brasília, Brazil. He has written the Our Languages coursebook series for FTD Educaçao, is a founder of the Raise Up! project and was nominated for an ELTON Award for the TEFL Commute podcast. He is the Project manager at Active English and a committee member of IATEFL TDSIG and BRAZ-TESOL Brasília.

6 responses to “(Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas: Speech Bubbles”

  1. Maria Salete Magrini Linz Avatar
    Maria Salete Magrini Linz

    Hi, James! I’ve done something with my students to practice Reported Speech. I wrote a (funny) sentence in the speech bubble, e.g. “I’ve bought a Ferrari”. One student would hold it above their head, but without knowing the content of the speech bubble. The rest of the group would say: “You said/you had bought a Ferrari” and the student who was holding the speech bubble would have to say the sentence in the Direct Speech (“I’ve bought a Ferrari”) and then he would read the speech bubble to check it out. My students loved the activity, specially because I’ve chosen funny sentences like “I love my mother-in-law”, “Is there any prison somewhere here?” “I may go to Siberia on vacation”.

    Reply
    1. James Taylor Avatar
      James Taylor

      That’s a great idea, Maria, thanks!

      Reply
  2. Anne Robinson Avatar
    Anne Robinson

    Hi James,
    I have a set of ‘shout outs’ that I made using interjections. I was inspired by party photo booths!
    I’ve been using them at workshops recently, and also published a post about them on my webpage:
    https://teachingtogether.info/shout-outs-for-encouraging-interaction-in-speaking/

    Reply
    1. James Taylor Avatar
      James Taylor

      Thanks Anne, this is a great idea!

      Reply
  3. Infinite ELT Ideas, by James Taylor | (Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas

    […] Take a look at his blog to see three (so far!) great suggestions for how to use them in class. What else would you do with them? […]

    Reply
  4. Kristen Schuenemeyer Avatar
    Kristen Schuenemeyer

    option 1: do a vocabulary activity called “What’s the question?”. I find the activity in a book (can’t remember the exact name but something like 150 Vocabulary Activities) a while ago and love it. Basically, you write the answer to a question. The answer contains the new vocabulary word. It is then your students’ job to brainstorm possible questions that could lead to that answer. For example, teacher writes on a speech bubble: “Because I didn’t get around to it.” And the students might write on their bubbles: “Why isn’t the laundry done?” Or “Why has the trash not been taken out?”

    option 2 (for face to face): have two teams of two people each. One partner from each team are on opposite sides of the room. On Wall 1 are two sets of speech bubbles, containing the same sentences, one set for each team. On Wall 2 are two sets of speech bubbles. Each set is identical, one for each team. Wall 1 contains things said by Speaker 1 and Wall 2 by Speaker 2. The objective is to match the speech bubbles from the two walls correctly. The fastest team wins. Players on Wall 1 choose a speech bubble and run to the middle of the room, where they meet their teammate and show them the chosen speech bubble. The teammate responsible for finding the answer runs to Wall 2 and finds the speech bubble that is the correct response and then runs back to the middle of the class to show their teammate. If the first teammate is happy with the response chosen by the second teammate, they can return for a new speech bubble to Wall 1. This would be ideal for functional language or adjacency pairs.

    James, a side note, I think this is a great blog series. I do hope either you or Sandy keep it going!

    Reply

Leave a reply to James Taylor Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.