Picture Dialogue! Cool Activity for Reported Speech.

Aims: Students will be able to practice transforming direct speech dialogues into reported speech in a creative way.

Time Alloted for the Activity: 25-30 minutes

Level: intermediate or above.

Procedures: 1) Teacher explains he/she will play a song and each student in turns should stand up and draw something simple on the board. Teacher may reinforce that the drawing must be simple and fast to perform. Students may came up with a drawing similar to the illustration above.

2) After the drawing is done, teacher will arrange students in pairs and say that they should write a short dialogue between two elements from the drawing e.g: cloud and sun, bird and tree. Tell them they have 5 minutes to write this short conversation and go around the class to help students with vocabulary, reported speech structures and encourage students to vary between reporting verbs say and tell. Below you find a sample dialogue my students wrote:

"Dialogue between the flower and the tree:

Flower: Hello, friendly tree. How are you today?

Tree: I'm great because it is sunny.

Flower: The day is really beautiful because it is Spring time.

Tree: Spring is great and I feel more lively because my leaves get greener."

3) When the 5 minutes are over, you tell students to exchange the dialogues sheets with the pairs sitting on their right. Now, you tell them they are supposed to write the reported speech version of the dialogue they got within 8-10 minutes. Below you find a sample of the reported speech dialogue:

" The flower said hello to the friendly tree and asked how the tree was. The tree said she was great because it was sunny. The flower told the tree that day was really beautiful because it was Spring Time. The tree said Spring was great and she felt more lively because her leaves got greener."

4) When students are done with the reported speech version of the conversations, they are invited to read aloud and students may vote for the funniest version!

Despite being interactive and communicative, this activity provides students with the chance of writing surprinsingly creative dialogues and practice reported speech in a way that is meaningful to them!