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Teacher: You missed school yesterday, didn’t you?
Pupil: Not very much!
Classroom Activity 3
Classroom Activity 3
The Incredible Shrinking
Dialogue
Level:
Upper Intermediate and above
Time required:
60 minutes, depending on class size
Goals:
To encourage students to analyze a text to find the most
important ideas;
to give students practice in paraphrasing,
speaking, and performing
Materials:
short dialogues with 4 or 5 lines for speakers A and B or
cartoon strips with 6–10 panels
Background:
This
activity is based on the concept of improve comedy,
which is dialogue
and action that actors create
spontaneously to make an audience laugh.
The students do not need to know this, but they do need
to know that this activity depends on a template—a set
of steps the students
perform—and that through these
steps, they can make the audience laugh.
Procedures:
1. Put students into pairs. As each pair performs ,
the activity,
a student from another pair can act as timekeeper.
2. Tell the students what they will do in each round of this
activity so that they can prepare for the full activity before
performing in front of the class:
Round 1:
Read the dialogue while acting it out with gestures.
Round 2:
Shorten
the dialogue and act it out in half the time.
Paraphrase well\ to keep
the main ideas, and use
gestures to enhance the audience’s understanding.
Round 3:
Shorten the dialogue again and act it out in 5 seconds.
Be sure to keep the main idea and use gestures.
Round 4:
Act out the dialogue in 1 second. You should use gestures,
but you have time for each speaker to say only one word.
3.
Hand out dialogues to each pair. Each pair must have
a different dialogue. Student A will have several lines to
speak, and Student B will
have several lines to speak.
The best dialogues to use include some action (gestures,
facial expressions, and body movement) and some kind
of conflict.
If
you don’t have dialogues, or if you want to give students
practice writing creatively, have them work in pairs to write
their own dialogues
or create their own cartoon strips.
Students can then exchange those dialogues.
The pair that receives the dialogue acts it out. You can
promote the creation of new dialogues by asking students
to use vocabulary they are currently studying.
For example, if students are learning about holidays, have
them write dialogues focused on those
holidays. In this
way, the activity provides vocabulary practice and review.
4.
Each pair practices the dialogue together to prepare to
present it in front of the class. Students should practice the
dialogue enough times so that they feel comfortable reading it.
Tell students to use action with their hands or body whenever
possible and also to use facial
expressions to show meaning.
Students do not have to memorize the dialogue when they act
it out and in fact should read the script exactly for Round 1.
Round 2.
The
students must shorten the dialogue so that they can
read it and act it
out in half the time. Depending on students’
abilities,they should
probably write out the shortened
dialogue and practice it, making sure it takes exactly
half the time.
Round 3:
Students
shorten the dialogue again, making sure they can
perform it in 5 seconds. Finally, the pair should decide on the
one word each student will say in Round 4.
5. Have the students perform their dialogues in front of the
class. Before each pair performs, assign someone from another
pair to act as timekeeper.
Round 1:
It should take the students about 30 seconds to 1 minute
to act out the dialogue. When the students finish, the
timekeeper should note how long Round 1 has taken.
Round 2:
The two students perform a shortened dialogue in half
the time. If Round 1
took 1 minute, Round 2 should take
30 seconds; if Round 1 took 30
seconds, Round 2 should
take 15 seconds. The students should shorten the
dialogue but keep as much of the original meaning as
possible.
Because
the pair planned out and practiced each round
before performing, they
should need only a few seconds
at the end of Round 1 to prepare to
perform Round 2.
The timekeeper should yell out and stop the action
when the time is up.
It is important that the pair keep the dialogue to
the
correct amount of time. It is not okay for students to
do the
dialogue in much less time or much more time
than the round allows. Controlling the time in this way
helps the class appreciate the humor of the activity.
Round 3:
The
students perform the shortened dialogue in 5
seconds. The students must
keep the meaning of
the original dialogue while also making sure not to
go over 5 seconds. The timekeeper should make
sure that the dialogue does not go over 5 seconds.
Round 4:
