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Two fun listening games

I've begun posting new listening resources on the Y10-11 page of frenchteacher. Up to now I have only ever posted video listening exercises (worksheets linked to online video clips), but for a while I have wanted to publish some instantly usable listening tasks which can be read aloud by the teacher or recorded, e.g. by a native speaker. (Posting my own recordings is problematic since only teachers have login access to my site, not students.)

So far I've uploaded two scripts - a description of a movie (Interstellar) and a TV series (Mr Robot). Apart from the read-aloud script there are accompanying exercises, all in the target language. I'm calling these resources "20 minute listening tasks".

While on the topic of listening, here are two gun games you can use with intermediate students or above:

Would I lie?

For intermediate to advanced level. Students try to work out which three of six statements are not true by asking you questions. You prepare five statements about yourself, three true and two false, and write them on the board. For example:
• My brother has twin sons.
• I have three cats.
• If I’d been a boy, I would’ve been called George.
• My family was brought up in Spain.
• My favourite movie is The Sound of Music.
• My father was an extra in Star Wars.
You can ask the class how many of the statements they think are false. Then tell them there are three. Tell them they have to work out which by asking you questions, listening to your answers and watching your reaction. You can embroider your answers as much as possible, giving the right number of hints depending on how fast you think your class is.

Let the students ask questions until they have decided which ones they believe (by a show of hands). Give them the real answer. You could add an element of competition by putting the class into pairs or small groups, with each grouping coming up with their chosen two false statements.

An extension to this task is to ask students to write down similar statements for themselves – three true and three false. Divide them into groups and repeat as above with one person from the group being questioned by the others.

One lie

While on the theme of lying, here is another game for intermediate level students and which can be played in pairs. Give each student about five minutes to write down a set of statements about themselves, all of which are true except one. In turn, each student reads their sentences and their partner has to identify the false statement.You can make this fit a particular grammar point you have been working on, e.g. to practice the past (preterite) tense you could set the them What I did last summer? Or, to practice the future tense My plans for the future.
A simple variation would be for each partner to have to discover how many lies their partner uttered, rather than just find one.




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