Getting to know you dictation

Activity type: this is a mingling ‘find someone who’ activity based on what the students would like to say about themselves.

Level: Intermediate and above

Teacher's notes:

Do a ‘find someone who activity’ with the students. Basically this is a very old activity in which students have unfinished sentences about class members or generic statements about people on a handout. What the students have to do is to find people who apply to the sentences. Look at the example below:

Find someone who….
1. ……Has been to Germany.
2. ……Loves reading Harry Potter books.
3. ……Reads in the bath tub.
4. ……Can speak more than two languages.
5. ……Likes chocolate.
6. ……Loves Hugh Grant.
7. ……Has seen the ‘Titanic’ movie more than once.
8. ……Has done a parachute jump.
9. ……Would like to go abroad this very minute!
10. ……Has tried Sushi.
The students walk around the class asking and answering questions based on the sheet e.g. Do you like chocolate? Have you been to Germany? The finished sentence would be: Martin has been to Germany.
Once they have mingled for a while, ask the students to take a seat and to go over the answers.
To expand this and to make it less general ask the students to write one sentence about themselves that they would like the other students in the class to know.
Give them a few minutes to write down something. If they find it hard to think of something, offer suggestions such as ‘I have been to Paraguay’ or ‘I hate Harry Potter!’
Once they have done this, collect all of the sentences.
Dictate the sentences out to the students. Make sure that you dictate the sentences grammatically correctly, even if there are mistakes in the original sentences.
Go over the sentences to make sure that the students have written them down correctly and then ask them to repeat the mingling ‘find someone who activity’ i.e. they should find which sentence belongs to who.
Make sure that they ask a little about each sentence and encourage them to develop the sentences into conversations.