Rhyming Old Wives’ Tales
I’m going to try something with my FCE group tonight..it might work, it might not – I’ll let you know how it goes!
I have some typical British sayings which I’m sure most of you are familiar with. I’m going to take out the rhyming words and the first activity is to match them back up.
Then, I’ll give the students the sayings with the words missing and they have to complete them.
A cheerful ………………… is the joy of ………………….
A hedge …………………… keeps friendship ………………
Advice when most ………………….. is less ……………………..
What soberness ………………………….., drunkeness ………………………
He that would the daughter ………………….., must with the mother first ………………….
Birds of a ……………….. flock ……………………
An apple a …………….. keeps the doctor …………………
Early to bed and early to ……………….. makes a man healthy, wealthy and ………………..
And finally, they can discuss what they think each saying means and decide on how far it is true.
Great fun, just tried it now. A couple I was less familiar with, so a nice selection. Let us know how it goes, please.
They actually found the rhyming quite difficult, even though they have a good level of English. They started off putting wife and wise together and had trouble with begin, win, between and green.
One of them gave up trying to put the pairs in the sayings! It was tough, especially as there was a fairbit of new vocabulary and some of it isn’t at all common, like heeded.
It was a fun activity though and we talked about a couple which have similar versions in Spanish.
Very interesting. It sounds as though it was a bit too difficult for them, despite their high level, as you say. I think it’s exposed an area they might like to work on. How did they feel about the similar vowels? You’ve seen the recent blogs on native-like pronunciation. Did they want to spend time on that? I’ve always had great times with minimal pairs.
True about “heeded”.