Picture completion
Adding details into the picture.
Students listen to some description and complete the picture according to it.
e.g.
Tapescript
Policeman: Well, now. We're looking for three people. Two young men and a woman. One of the men is black, the other is white. The woman is also white. The black man is about twenty-five. He has short, curly black hair. Very short, actually. And a very thin moustache. We understand that he sometimes wears a small, plain gold earring in his right ear and that he often wears dark glasses, er, you know, sunglasses. He was the driver of the car, we think. Now the second man we're looking for - he's white and about twenty-five to thirty years old. Er, now he's also got curly hair, but it's rather long and ifs light brown. Not blond, but not dark, either ... you know, fair yes, that's it fair. He has a full moustache but no beard. We think he has a small scar, it's half-moon shaped, on his forehead, just above his left eye ... er ... we think his name might be John or Jock or Jack... something like that. And now the third person we're looking for. Well. She's about thirty years old. She's got blonde, wavy, shoulder-length hair. She wears glasses, we think, er rather square, heavy-looking glasses and she sometimes seems to be wearing a silver chain around her neck, with some sort of medallion on it, you know, a St Christopher, or something like that...
(taken from Listening in Action, unit 5)
Outlining
Outlining the text.
Students read / listen to the text and make its outline.
e.g.
-
The long hiccup
by our medical reporter, Mary Lawson
For many people the subject of hiccups is a joke, but for Harry Mendis, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy from Birmingham, it was something quite different.
His hiccups began one Sunday lunchtime and continued day and night for two weeks. After the first week, Harry was desperate and his parents took him to hospital, but it took another week for the doctors to cure his attack.
Harry, who is now back at school, described what happened to him.
“I began to hiccup after eating a curry from my local takeaway. I drank a glass of water but that didn't do any good. That evening I had hiccups every four seconds. We tried everything to stop them. I held my breath and drank cold drinks. My father even tried to give me a shock but that didn't work either.”
After a week of sleepless nights, he went to hospital. The doctors took an X-ray of his chest but they couldn't find anything wrong.
“They gave me some tablets and my hiccups slowed down, but it was another week before the tablets worked completely and my hiccups stopped.”
Harry was very lucky. The world record holder is the unfortunate American farmer Charles Osborne, who hiccupped constantly for sixty-eight years. He eventually stopped in 1990, but nobody knows why.
The outline:
Harry Mendis, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy.
Harry suffered from hiccup for a long time.
How it all began.
a) trying to stop it;
b) two-weeks long hiccup;
c) at the hospital.
All is well that ends well.
Other examples.