Telephone conversations - Listening and pronunciation practise

Today, I rang the students from my colleagues phone. Each student had to go into my office and answer the phone. I gave each student a message to perform. They had to use strategies (if they needed to) to correctly understand my message. They returned to class and carried out the messsage, eg. could you please tell Soma that I will meet him at four o'clock at the Bill Robertson Library, etc.

The students then checked with me that their message was correct. I then got the students to write down the conversation in their books. I checked the conversations and then the students recorded them on a cassette tape. Once all the students had done this, I got different pairs to listen to one conversation and write the conversation down in their books. The students had to listen very carefully to all of the details. I then got the students to write the conversations on the blog. I intend to now go through the written conversations and put them up on the whiteboard (through the data projector) and put on the tonal shifts and highlight some pronunciation on one of the conversations. I will then get the students to look at the conversations that they wrote in their books and write in the tonal shifts using arrows and marks to show emphasis, etc.

The Task:

1. Telephone conversation with me.
2. Wrote down the message.
3. Told the message to the other students.
4. Wrote down the whole conversation.
5. Recorded the conversation.
6. Wrote the conversation out neatly.
7. Listen to a different conversation and write it out neatly.
8. Checked the conversation for correctness.
9. Pronunciation practise.

The aim of the task is to practise listening to phone messages, give information (transactional), and practise pronunciation.

The next task is to get students to make up their own phone conversations and practise them using the same process as above.

One of the students had to cancel their hair appointment using the phone. Here is the conversation that we used, below.

HD: Welcome to [hairdresser's name], you're speaking with Susie,

S: Oh, hi, this is [student's name],

HD: Oh, hi, what can I do for you?

S: um, I was wanting to cancel my appointment.

HD: Sure, when was your appointment?

S: um, this Wednesday at four forty five.

HD: Ok, what was your name?

S: Um, [student's name]

HD: Sorry could you spell that please.

S: Sure, it's [........]

HD: Sure, ok, that's fine, no problem.

S: Ok, sorry about that, thank you, bye.

HD: Ok, see you later.