10 ways to use tongue twisters in your class!

I LOVE tongue twisters!

Sometimes I am pretty good at them. I feel like I have an agile frog's tongue attacking sounds as they come.

Other times I get so tangled I feel more like I have the dog's tongue, a useless appendage that just hangs from my mouth. 

OK, so we all know what a tongue twister is, but how can we best use them in class. Have the students say them? Well yeah... but what else? Here are 10 different ways to use tongue twisters in class.

1. Dictoglosses  (Higher Level)
• I’ve mentioned using them in dictoglosses and that can work well. A dictogloss is essentially an activity where students hear a text (in this case the tongue twister) and without notes try to write what they remember. Then they hear it again and get to work with a partner to share both renditions with the end goal of having replicated the original text well
• The advantage of using tongue twisters in a dictogloss? Unlike other EFL activities this has students hearing the sounds repeated (first by the teacher then the other student). They also have to talk with their partner (practice speaking) and write the sounds (often with homonyms this can be tricky).
2. Running Dictations (I've done this with all levels)

• Divide your class into small groups (of two-three students is perfect)
• Post tongue twisters on the wall around the classroom (as many tongue twisters as there are groups).
• Explain that one person at a time can run to a tongue twister and then run back to the table. The person at the table then writes down the tongue twister as the runner told them.
3. Fill in the blanks (Depending on the blanks you choose, all levels)
• Give them a longer tongue twister with some blanks. Ex. If I buy some better ______ it will make the batter _______. See if they can fill in the blanks based on what the rest of the tongue twister says.
4. Who’s there? (All levels are possible depending on the tongue twister you use)

• If you are looking for another oldie but goodie in the EFL world try Telephone. This increases the difficulty of the game as each time the message is passed one person will have to say it correctly (usually challenging) and the other person will have to hear it correctly. This will help students remember that speeding up their speaking won’t always help them.
• Try to use shorter tongue twisters for this game! ("Red lorry, yellow lorry" twice is fine.)
5. The Rotation Situation (All levels)
• The best tongue twisters to do this with are the ones that play minimal pairs off each other. For example: “She sells sea shells by the sea shore” uses s and sh.
• The premise is you pick a simple pattern: putting your hands on your shoulders and putting your hands on your head. “She” hands on your head “sells sea“ hands on your shoulders ”shells by the“ hands on your shoulders “sea” hands on your head, “shore”.
• This can be done slowly at first, but once students get the hang of it try it faster and faster each time.
• This is commonly done with, “My Bonnie lies over the ocean” with students standing and sitting every time they hear the B sound. It helps them recognize and distinguish sounds.
6. One by one (All levels are possible depending on the tongue twister you choose)
• Another fun way to do this is to have the tongue twister on the board and have the students say the tongue twister individually. That is, that one student says “On” the student behind him says “a” the student behind him says, “lazy” etc. The other students should pay attention as they still need to move their hands appropriately and be prepared for their turn. This can make the game more fun. See how many times you can get around the classroom. Use a stopwatch and see how fast the class can do it. Divide the class into two groups and see who does it the fastest etc.
7. Illustrate it

• Have students illustrate a shorter tongue twister. 
• Then have them present it to the class.
• In the end bind them together for your own tongue twister book.
8. “Oh no! Where’d it go?” (For lower levels, but your higher level class may like it)
• Younger students love chants so I would write entire tongue twisters on the board and then erase one word and say, “Oh no, where’d it go!” Silly but they loved it!
• Then we’d try to recite the tongue twister even though the one word had been removed.
• After we said it a couple times I'd erase another word, "Oh no! Where's it go?" and we'd try to do it again without that word on the board.
• In the end there would be no words on the board, and we would successfully do it on our own
9. Hangman
• Use a classic game of hangman (or a not so classic game) and at the end have the students say the tongue twister. If they do so successfully they get an extra point for their team.
10. Make their own
• Now that they have seen tongue twisters see if they can come up with their own and present it to the class. 
• Vote on the best tongue twisters, the funniest, the saddest etc.

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If you are trying to find a place with tongue twisters the Internet is FILLED with them. Right now Twisty Tongue Twisters, Looney Limericks and Pixelated Poems and Tongue Twisters for Kids are free to download from Amazon. If you don't get them while they are free you can still find them for under $3.00! If I could only pick one I would suggest you spend the extra $2.00 and get Tongue Twisters for Kids.

What about you? I am sure there are more ways to use them and if you know of any please share them in the comments below. Or do you have a site you love using to find that perfect tongue twister? Share it in the comments!

5 fun ways to use a Dictogloss in the EFL class

Listening is important. Collaboration is important. Writing is important.

Dictoglosses combine all of these these things to keep students' brains working in a foreign language.

What is a dictogloss?

I am glad you asked :) Dictoglosses are essentially dictation exercises where students work together to recreate a text. The process is normally as such:

1. The teacher reads a text. Students listen. They do not take notes. They just listen.
2. The students INDIVIDUALLY write down as much of the story as they can remember. They can use pictures, abbreviations, other words, blanks or anything else that will help them if they don't recall the specifics. 
3. (optional) The text is read again. Students do NOT write while the teacher is speaking. When the teacher finishes, they make changes as needed to their version. (I prefer to skip this step and go straight to 4, but some teachers find their classes don't have much to share unless this step is used. You know your classroom best so do what you think will work!)
4. The students pair up with a friend and together try to combine their versions to get the version as close to the original as possible.
5. Students put down their pens and the teacher reads the text one last time.
6. The students get a few more moments to write their final version (if you as a teacher want you can combine pairs at this point to make a group of 4 working together on the final version).
7. If you want you can have the students write the final version on butcher paper and everyone posts it on the board. Then give students time to circulate and mark any mistakes they see (misspelled words, bad punctuation etc.) I find the faster way is to have them pass the paper to the right/left and then the teacher reads the reading again and they correct the paper. 
8. I usually give the team with the fewest mistakes a prize of some sort (bonus points, free homework passes, etc.)

So now that we know the basics. How do make this fun?

SONGS Well, part of it means that you have to pick fun texts! Use a song! Yes, I know that I love to use songs whenever possible but it can be fun. Break out lyrics (and have them listen to the song to reveal the answers). You shouldn't use a full song unless it is really an upper level class. If they are fairly advanced though you don't even need to speak. Just play the chunk of the song, (something slower and older the students won't know. The first 30 seconds or one minute of Jill Sobule's "Lucy at the Gym" is a good example; the first 20 seconds of "It makes me ill" would not be advised. I find punctuating these is usually the hardest part!


DRAW AND TELL With lower students tell a draw and tell WITH the picture, and keept the picture up! Stories tend to follow a logical progression more than a speech or tongue twister. Since they are lower level the visual will also help them remember the story and vocabulary used. Just be sure to remember to keep it short! You could also differentiate by passing out the picture to certain students and not to others. More on Draw and Tells here.

MOVIES/TELEVSION Again, keep the level of the student in mind. You don't want to use Rock, Paper, Lizard, Scissors, Spock from The Big Bang Theory. The first minute (actually I'd keep it at the first 20 seconds) of the Hitchhikers Guide the to Galaxy is better. You could use the audio from the movie, or recite it yourself. Be careful of accents, background noise, and audio that requires students to see something to understand it.

 TED TALKS / NPR / SPEECHES Get authentic speech in here! TedTalks could work. Why not try the  first 39 seconds of this one. Use an acceptance speech from MTVs Video Music Awards (because many students care more if Taylor Swift says it than if you say it). These can be helpful when practicing idioms and other things that don't often come up in artificial texts. These can be very difficult if the person is a fast talker, or there are lots of proper nouns. I LOVE Peter Dinklage for example, but his recent Emmy acceptance speech has some names student may struggle with. I may tell them to just use initials or write the names on the board to help them out with that part.


 TONGUE TWISTERS / BRAIN TEASERS Tongue Twisters can be fun for advanced students and brain teasers have the added bonus of letting students who finish quickly try to solve them. These also tend to be super short. Tongue twisters have the advantage of being used to differentiate sounds (especiall minimal pairs). Try to start with something like, "She sells sea shells by the sea shore" and then move onto something longer like, "Betty bought some butter 'But,' she said, 'this butter's bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter, better than the bitter butter will make my bitter batter better.' So she bought a bit of better butter, Better than the bitter butter, and made her bitter batter better.

So there you go 5 ways to make dictoglosses a bit more fun! Do remember to aim the text at your learners. Stories are easier than texts which don't follow a logical progression. Keep in mind accents, vocabulary, etc. To make them even more effective try to use texts or audio that have grammar points you have recently covered. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Lucy at the Gym both have transition words for example.

Have you used dictoglosses? What texts do you find work well? Any other tips to share?