Tongue Twisters

Sharing ideas with other language assistants can be a great source of inspiration and motivation. Not only do you brainstorm entire new lesson plans and ways in which to engage an audience, there is the satisfying reassurance that other teachers are experiencing similar difficulties. Together, growing your ideas and using these connections helps both teachers grow.

Such was the case this week when, over coffee, a friend and I noted how we were losing steam with our ideas for how to engage a class. We discussed our teaching methods and reminisced on some of the better lessons we had delivered over the course of the year so far.

As with chocolates and football, the key seems to be never to complicate matters more than necessary.

Tongue Twisters left the children with funny faces.

My friend suggested I try a lesson of tongue twisters to help my students hone in on their pronunciation, whilst having fun at the same time.

In Marseille, where teenage attitude favours rap and hip hop above all else, this seemed a perfect method to connect with the students. Many of my classes have certain pupils who try to avoid speaking each week, and this seemed like it would encourage an overall level of participation, whilst also nodding to some of the favourite hobbies of these would be rap stars.

Introducing the tongue twisters, the children were a little shocked and perturbed. I rattled off several different examples without pausing and when I got half way down my list to “How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?”, I not only had stunned silence, but certain nervous glances shot around the room.

I explained that these were difficult for English people and gave a few examples where I had difficulty such as “Red lorry, yellow lorry”, (which one student later did perfectly to everyone’s amazement).

To start out, I had individuals pick one of the rhymes to practice. They would say it slowly and I would correct their pronunciation for everyone to repeat. Gradually they would say it quicker, until I told the student to keep going until they messed up, leaving several out of breath and red in the face, but smiling.

After, I split the teams into two groups and they had a rap-off battle, where a member from each team was sent up to face off in a tongue twister battle. I was later told that this led to one avid pupil rapping “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he?” for the whole week much to the consternation of other teaching staff, who had no idea what the boy was talking about, or why the other children found it so highly amusing.

This teaching tip was a brilliant way to reinvigorate the classroom and match the mood of a number of my teenagers. Collaborating with others can be just as important as leading your own classroom.