Paraphrasing Practice for Millennials

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Teaching paraphrasing and summarizing can be frustrating for students.  One way that I’ve tried to make it slightly more enjoyable is framing the skill in the context of sending tweets.

Prior to class, I draw up a three or four short paragraphs that I feel can be summed up in 140 characters.  A paragraph might look like this:

Today I went to the mall.  I had to buy some new blue jeans since mine look a little old.  When I got to the mall I couldn’t find a parking spot since it was so busy.  Once I got into the mall, I couldn’t walk past all of the stores without buying something in them.  By the time I left, I had bought a new shirt, some new shoes a slice of pizza and some new jeans.  I spent all of my money!

Working in small groups and using a twitter app, students try to condense the paragraphs into single tweets.  After each group completes their tweets, we put them on the board and compare answers to see who was able to get the most information into a single tweet (there’s no single right answer).

Three Truths, One Lie

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A classic activity which can be used to target a wide range of grammar structures, vocabulary, etc.

Students are told that they need to write four sentences, three are true and one is false.  The teacher can specify what the sentences must be about, for example: “write four sentences about yourself using the present perfect” or “write four sentences about San Francisco that use the vocabulary words we learned yesterday.”

Once all of the students have written their sentences, put them into small groups to exchange their sentences.  After a student reads his/her sentences, the other students must guess which one is not true.  Once all of the students have read to their group, the students who managed to stump their group can read their sentences to the class.

Opinion Gap

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A basic activity which involves students, in pairs or small groups, reading or listening to the same information.  This can be a story form the news, a fictional story, etc., that will elicit a range of opinions from students.  For example, Justin Bieber’s new tattoo.  The goal is to inspire conversation and the exchange of information (opinions) using the target language.

From my experience, it’s generally best to use fictional situations or news related to pop culture since some students are adverse to discussing topics that might be considered politically sensitive.