Voicing grammatical mimes

1) As with the previous exercise (with hide nonvideo participants activated), ask the students to turn off their webcams so that only that only your camera is visible. Tell them that you're going to mime a particular sentence using the chosen area of grammar (I used past simple/past continuous sentences in my example below). Ask them to try to guess what the sentence is by writing it in the chat.

I was hanging up the washing when it started to pour with rain.

2) Now tell them but you're going to repeat the mime, but this time you'd like somebody to say out loud what they think you might be thinking. This person should have their camera turned off. See the examples below. You'll notice that they can be very funny to watch, especially if a man is voicing a woman (or vice versa)

3) Put the students into small groups and divide up the chosen examples so that each group has a few each. Ask them to prepare to mime them to each other and to add a voiceover to each one. Once they've done that, see if they can add their own examples which use the same area of language, and to mime these to each other with voiceovers too.

 Past continuous and past simple

 1) I was hanging up the washing and it started to pour with rain.

2) I was having a shower and the phone rang.

 3) I was watching TV when we had a power cut.

 4) I was washing up when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my back.

 5) I was writing an email when my computer suddenly froze.

 6) I was talking on the phone when it suddenly died.

 7) I was eating some soup when I suddenly noticed that there was a cockroach in it.

 8) I was digging the garden and I found a gold necklace.

 9) I was playing tennis and the ball hit me in the face.

 10) I was ironing my clothes when I suddenly got an electric shock.

Problems (with the present perfect)

 Note: These sentences all use the present perfect to show the present impact of an event which has already happened. So the mimes should show this rather than the event itself (eg with the first one, students should mime their annoyance and trying to get the coffee stain out, rather than the actual act of spilling the coffee)

 1) You've spilt coffee all over your favourite shirt.

2) Your phone has died.

3) You've lost your door key.

4) You've twisted your ankle.

5) You've forgotten what you came into the room for.

6) You've bitten your tongue.

7) You've eaten too much.

8) You've forgotten to bring an umbrella.

9) You've lost your voice.

10)Your car has broken down.

4) Now invite everyone back to the main room and ask them to present some of their voiced mimes to everyone else. Those from different groups try to guess the sentence.

 Notes

 1) This activity works well as revision so it's good if you choose an area of language that the students are already somehow familiar with. However, mime is an excellent way to clarify meaning, to activate what may have previously been passive knowledge, and to make language memorable, so they certainly don't need to know the language area inside out beforehand.

 2) We could, of course just ask the class to shout out their answers when they are guessing. This would be quicker but probably less rich in terms of learning. If students have to write, there is the chance for more people to be involved (both in guessing and in seeing what others guess) and they are also more likely to try to be accurate.

 3) The strength of this exercise lies in the way it combines grammatical accuracy (the focus on getting the form right) with rich fluency development too (doing the voice over and the discussion that this activity invariable provokes).