Placement Activity: Giving Directions

Here is an activity for students who have a higher level of English, but need to practice their speaking and listening comprehension.  It works especially well because it is based on a real-life scenario.  It is also a great excuse for you to ask your pupils how to get around the local community!

To add another element, if you have a chalk board, you can draw your own map - have the students give you directions in order to draw streets, buildings, and landmarks.

Activity/Idea name:
Giving directions to tourists

Brief description of the placement where you work (please include ages, number of people, languages spoken, other etc):
I worked with men and women (all ages) with a fair grasp of English. Their reading and listening comprehension was at a higher level than conversation, so I always looked for ways to have them speaking.

Goal of the activity:
Members of the class stated that tourists often ask them for directions and they wanted to know how to respond. The goal of the activity was to give them the vocabulary and skills necessary to answer.

Required resources:

· A small partition of a city map (with perhaps 8 intersecting streets and 10 landmarks placed on the map)
· A small partition of a city map with streets marked and about 4 landmarks placed on the map

Step-by-step process:

There were three separate activities:

1. Activity one: using the map with all streets and landmarks placed, ask questions such as: what is next to...across from...at the corner of...in back of... in front of... behind...left/right/east/north of, etc. 
2. Activity two: using a “blank map” have them put landmarks (e.g. the hospital is next to the hotel, the parking lot is at the corner of Bird St and Dog Rd., The Burger King is between the beauty salon and the bank, the park is behind the school.) Then, ask the students to give directions from Point A to Point B. Do at least a dozen examples so they get the idea.
3. Activity three: pair the students, have one be the tourist and one be the resident. Have the tourist (choosing his Point A) say “excuse me, could you give me directions to Point B.” Have the resident answer. Switch places. During this time, I walked around and helped them, putting any problem words on the board for later discussion.

Do you have any suggestions/improvements for the next time?

This activity worked very well and got the class talking and interacting. We added quite a bit of new and useful vocabulary during the exercise.