Shout it out!
In this activity learners listen to a text (or part of a text) and shout out the word they think comes next when you pause the text. This helps them to focus on prediction when listening and also common collocations. The ‘shout it out’ element of the activity helps to take the pressure off weaker listeners, who are not put on the spot but can have a go anyway when they think they know the word. It helps if you (the teacher) read the text as you can go at an appropriate speed for your learners, but you could also do this activity by pausing a recorded listening, or a video and predicting the next words in the same way.
Level Sample: B1
Language link: Any language you choose to focus on.
Time: 5-10 minutes
Preparation: Select a text, or a section of text which you will read to your learners. This can be a text which you have already used or plan to use in class. Choose some key words to delete from the text. Try to choose one or two words from each sentence thinking about how easy / difficult the word will be to predict from the co-text and context.
You can use this idea as a first listening for a text, or even as a later listening task once you have already worked on comprehension of the text. You might choose to focus on particular words according to the language point you are teaching.
Prepare a worksheet for your text like the one in the sample copy below.
| Are women really more talkative than men? Men are fundamentally different to 1)_____. Yet, a recent 2)_____ showed that men and women speak about the same number of 3)_____ per day on 4)_____. The stereotype that men are mostly 5)_____ and women are 6)_____ is just a stereotype. However, the topics of 7)_____ may be different. The study 8)_____ that, in general, men spoke about 9)_____ and 10)_____ while women mostly spoke about 11)_____. Answer key 1) women 2) study 3) words 4) average 5) quiet 6) chatterboxes 7) conversation 8) showed 9)sports 10) gadgets 11) relationships |
Procedure: Stage 1: Tell the class they are going to listen to a text and shout out the words they think come next when you pause (or stop the recording).
Stage 2: Read the text to the class (or use a recording). Pause or stop the recording at key points and get students to shout out what they think the next word is. With a large class, you can ask a specific group of students to have the first go at guessing the next word(s), or the first row(s). Then other groups/rows can come up with alternatives.
Stage 3: Accept any correct answers (including alternatives to the original if they are grammatically and semantically correct).
Alan Marsh and Antonia Clare The Creative Teacher’s Compendium © Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd and its licensors 2020