Nancy

This is a lively activity that practises, speaking, listening, writing, walking and remembering!

Choose a short passage or dialogue and make several copies. Put the copies up around the walls of the classroom (or even the school building).

Put the students in pairs or small groups. The aim is for one of the students in each pair to walk (or run!) to read the passage on the wall. They remember some of the passage and walk (or run!) back to their partner. They quietly dictate what they remembered to their partner, who writes it down. They then swap roles. Over several turns they will build the whole passage. This means they really do have to run back and forth because students will only remember three or four words at a time.

The winning pair is the team that finishes first - although you need to check for mistakes. If there are mistakes, they must keep walking to check!

A good idea is to teach them punctuation vocabulary beforehand if you want them to use the correct punctuation in English. It's a good way to check spelling and fabulous for pronunciation - and great memory training!

Some feedback from a teacher who tried this activity
Elaine, Perth Australia
I used this running dictation idea of yours with my lovely class of ESL adult beginners of all ages and nationalities. It worked a treat! The whole room was humming and the mission was accomplished with a deal of fun. It revealed quite a lot about the students, the generous souls, the class cheats and the people who'd really prefer to work alone, but for the greater good they co-operated with others of differing literacy levels. The main problem was stopping the slower pairs after 40 minutes! Thanks so much for the inspiration.

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