AT THE SOUND OF THE BEEP...
LEVELS: Intermediate
CLASS TIME: 30-60 min.
PREPARATION TIME: 30 min.
RESOURCES: answering machine, tape recorder
AIMS:
- Practice listening to and getting information from messages left on a telephone answering machine.
- Practice giving personal information and talking about future plans.
- Practice requests, idioms and reported speech.
PROCEDURE:
- Record some messages from an answering machine onto a tape.
- Prepare a list of questions for students to discuss for each message (these can be put on a handout, written
on the board, or presented orally). The type of questions you prepare will obviously depend on the language used
in the messages and the level of your students (e.g. idioms for higher level classes).
- In class, briefly discuss the role of answering machines in Western society, including both their advantages
and disadvantages.
- Present the questions for the first message and then play it for the students (as many times as they need to
get down the necessary information).
- Have students compare their answers in pairs or small groups and then go over them with the whole class. Clarify
any new vocabulary.
- Do the same with the rest of the messages.
CAVEATS AND OPTIONS:
- Prepare an information table or a cloze, multiple choice, or true-false exercise for the students to fill out
while they listen (depending on the level of the class).
- For practice in reported speech, have the students give the messages to each other. You may need to practice
some of the reductions involved, such as Wha'd ("What did": e.g. "Bill called." "Oh,
wha'd he say." "He said that...").
- After you have gone through all the messages, have pairs of students pick one of them and act out a short follow-up
phone conversation. You may need to go over some of the conventions used (e.g. "Hi Jane, I got your message.
What's up?").
- In order to have more control over the content of the messages, phone the answering machine yourself and leave
a more scripted message that uses the language you want to deal with in class.
From New Ways in Teaching Listening, edited by David Nunan and Lindsay Miller, � 1995 TESOL