Tongue Twisters ESL Lesson Plan

OBJECTIVE & OVERVIEW

This tongue twisters ESL lesson plan contains activities, PDF worksheets, and digital materials for B1 intermediate students. By the end of the lesson, students will learn up to 10 new tongue twisters and be able to say them.They’ll learn 5 from the video, and an additional 5 in the lesson plan materials.

PREVIEW & DISCUSSION

To start this tongue twister ESL lesson plan, students will listen to an audio clip of a woman trying to say some tongue twisters. They discuss some questions about the audio clip, and then move on to discuss some more general questions about tongue twisters. Then, students do a matching activity based on some images. The objects in the images will be heard in the tongue twisters from the video. Students practice saying chunks of these tongue twisters before viewing the video.

VIDEO & LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Students proceed to watch a short video of a woman saying 5 tongue twisters in English. She states what her favorite tongue twister is. In the activities, students have to choose the word the woman uses to describe the tongue twisters, and then put a mixed order of the tongue twisters in the correct order.

DISCUSSION & TONGUE TWISTERS

After watching the video, students practice saying the tongue twisters out loud. On the first attempt, they try to read them slowly, and on the second attempt, they read them a bit quicker. They’ll answer some questions about the difficulty of the tongue twisters and what the experience was like saying them. In the final activity in this section, students match some images into some new tongue twisters that were not contained in the video. Some of these tongue twisters include:

1. She sells seashells by the seashore.
2. I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen.
3. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
4. Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said the butter’s bitter.
5. Rory the warrior roared and warned the worried warriors.

TONGUE TWISTER TALK TIME!

In this activation, students have two options. In the first option, they get the chance to come up with a dialogue that includes one of the tongue twisters they’ve learned. They take a role in the dialogue and read it out loud together. In the second option, come up with their own tongue twisters together. They get to share them with classmates/their teacher and practice saying them out loud together.

BONUS GRAMMAR

This lesson plan on tongue twisters contains a bonus grammar activity featuring the past simple. In the activity, students analyze some tongue twisters from the lesson in the past simple using both regular and irregular past tense verbs. Then, they complete some more tongue twisters that use the past tense. Their job is to write the correct irregular or regular past tense form for each one.

Benefits of using this tongue twisters ESL lesson plan:

Oral Fluency: The lesson plan focuses on improving oral fluency by engaging students in the pronunciation of challenging tongue twisters. This helps students develop clearer and more confident speech.

Creative Expression: The “Tongue Twister Talk Time” section encourages creativity as students either develop dialogues using learned tongue twisters or create their own. This encourages linguistic creativity in a fun context.

Grammar Integration: The inclusion of a bonus grammar activity integrates grammar practice with tongue twisters, reinforcing the past simple tense. This approach can make the learning experience more effective by combining pronunciation with grammar.