My favourite speaking activities

Retelling a story in one's own words (rather than reciting a text from memory) provides oral fluency practice. Story-telling is a common human activity which can be enjoyable, especially if the material is interesting. On the other hand, when listening to a story in a foreign language it is easy to "tune out". The twist in this activity is that the listener has to be attentive because they will shortly have to retell the story that they are hearing.

Students work in pairs, but in the grander scheme of things they are organised into groups of four. Each of the four members initially receives a short written narrative which they read quietly (jokes are ideally suited to this purpose). Then they must retell this story to another group member. In the second round of story-telling, they change partners and retell the story they just heard from their previous partner. After a third round of story-telling, everyone in the group will have heard each of the stories.

Prepare four short passages (such as jokes), suited to the language level of the students. Ideally, they would be able to read the passages without needing a dictionary. Of course, if there is a word which few students are likely to know, and you can't avoid using it, then you may choose to introduce it to the class before starting the activity, or add the pronunciation and translation to the hand-out.

Clearly label the stories A, B, C, and D. Make enough copies so that each student can receive one of the four stories. The hand-outs are collected during the activity, and can be reused.

Hint: choose jokes which are genuinely in the form of stories, with several events leading to the punch line. If a lot of the detail is just embellishment, and not actually essential to the meaning of the joke, then it will be easily forgotten and the joke will probably shrink to only one or two sentences after a few retellings!

Suitable jokes can be found on the internet (although you will have to sift through many unsuitable ones). See the Resources section for examples.

1. Organise the students into groups of four. If the number of students is not divisible by four, then see the What to do about surplus students section, below.
2. Show them that you have prepared four different stories. Explain that you will let each member in the group read a story quietly, then you will collect the stories back again and they will have to retell the story. Explain that they don't have to remember each word, just the general meaning of the passage. Explain that they shouldn't start talking until you tell them to. If necessary, ask them not to write on the sheets. Instruction check:
   • Can you show your sheet to anybody else? (no)
   • Do you have to remember every word of the story? (no)
   • When will you start telling the story? (not until the teacher says to)
3. Distribute the stories so that each member in the group gets a different one. It's best if stories A, B, C, D go around the group like this:

   A	B
   D	C

4. Give the students time to read their stories.
5. Tell them to look at their letter, A, B, C, or D, and remember it. (Check by asking the As to put their hands up, etc).
6. Collect the stories, by asking the students to pass the sheets to the front of the classroom.
7. Draw a diagram on the board: the letters A, B, C, and D as the four corners of a square. Explain, and indicate on the diagram, that student A will tell their story to student B, and then B will tell their story to A. Similarly, C and D will talk to each other. Now comes the surprise: "You must listen very carefully," (point to your ear!), "Because later you will tell the story you hear to somebody else." Instruction check:
   • Why should you listen carefully?
8. While the students are talking, circulate with a copy of each story in your hand in case some students need to be reminded of the details. It may also be necessary to hurry some students along if they are going too slowly, because otherwise the rest of the class will have to wait for them.
9. Once all the students have finished telling their stories, erase your previous scribbles from the diagram and indicate that next student A will talk to student D, while B talks to C. Instruction check:
   • Will you tell the story you read (point to sheet), or the story you just heard (point to ear)? (the one you just heard)
   Now warn them that they will have to listen very carefully again, because they will have to retell this story too!
10. Once the students have finished swapping stories, explain the next pairing, which is actually the same as the first: A talks to B, while C talks to D. Tell them that they must listen carefully once again, but this time because you will choose one student to tell the story they hear to the class.
11. Carry out your threat...choose a random student to tell their story. Everybody in the class should have heard this story by now, so ask them to listen and see if the chosen student tells it correctly. Afterwards, invite comments on how the story has changed through being retold.