09-11-2012, 12:41 PM
Dramatic Dialogues
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The following dialogues can be used in a variety of ways,and are suitable for all levels except total beginners.
TWO AIMS for these DIALOGUES
1. They can serve as pronunciation practice, more specifically intonation practice.
Intonation refers to the rise and fall of the pitch in our voice when speaking. A flat
intonation in learners of English can often be interpreted as boredom or sullenness. Byasking learners to role play different situations, with the language already there for
them, more work can be done with sentence stress and intonation.
2. They can also be used to start off a speaking activity. They are all slightly ambiguous,which means that there are many different possible contexts each one could have. Onceyou have provided different contexts for them to be read aloud, ask learners to speculateand make a list of other possible contexts. Another obvious follow up would be to tellthem to extend the dialogue by another four or six lines. Or simply continue ad-libbingthe dialogue after it has finished.
HOW TO USE these DIALOGUES
Give out the dialogue(s) and ask students to read it (one) together. It is unlikely that
students will vary their intonation at this stage.
Under each dialogue there are a list of possible contexts or emotions. Ask learners to
read out the dialogue again, but putting in the context or emotion. They must still stickto the script of the dialogue and not add or subtract any words. There are different ways you can do this in class.
1. Ask students to do it in pairs. Ask a pair to come up and perform the scene for
the rest of the class.
2. After the initial practice of the dialogue, ask a pair to come up and perform it in
front of the class. Give them the context (which the rest of the group doesn't
hear). The rest of the class has to guess the context.
3. Same as (2) above but give the context to everyone except ONE of the learners
performing the dialogue (he or she could leave the room while you do this).
When he or she comes back, the pair performs the dialogue and the learner has to guess what was happening.