In my own classes, I introduce the 8 things that happy people do with a student-to-student dictation. The dictation serves several purposes. It is a good way to get content information to the students. It is also very clearly a language learning/practice activity. I want my students to know that, even though happiness and positive psychology are unusual topics for an English classroom, we really are using this to raise their English level.
Download Happiness Dictation. There are a few different ways to do the dictation. You can give each student a strip of paper with one sentence as well as a tasksheet. They move around the class, dictating their sentences and writing the missing words from their partners' sentences on the tasksheet. OR you can do the activity as a pairwork. Finally, you can have them using only the sentence strips. They write the full sentences.
After they finish, we take a few minutes to talk about each item, to make sure they take the time to think about the meaning.
All the tasksheets you need are in the file. They are photocopiable (as is nearly everything on this website).
I do this lesson early in the semester. Then I scatter "happiness/positive psychology ELT" activities throughout the course.
A week or two after doing "happiness dictation", I sometimes give out the tasksheet again. In pairs, students see if they can remember the content and write the missing words. They helps them review and remember.
Sometime later in the semester, I do the "Happiness Haiku" consolidation activity. This recycles the same ideas but, since students are writing haiku poems, it requires deeper processing that just writing sentences.
Most of the dictation sentences are easy to understand but, in sentence 5, "forgive" is often an unknown word. I teach in Japan. Here is a version of the dictation sentences that include the word " 許す " (yurusu) in Japanese. Here is a version that has "용서햐다" (yongseohada) in Korean. This one has "memaafkan, mengampuni " in Bahasa. This one has !मा गन (Māpha garnuhōs) in Nepali नेपाली
नेपाली
This activity from Marc's 2019 ABAX reference book is HERE.
Download Happiness Dictation. There are a few different ways to do the dictation. You can give each student a strip of paper with one sentence as well as a tasksheet. They move around the class, dictating their sentences and writing the missing words from their partners' sentences on the tasksheet. OR you can do the activity as a pairwork. Finally, you can have them using only the sentence strips. They write the full sentences.
After they finish, we take a few minutes to talk about each item, to make sure they take the time to think about the meaning.
All the tasksheets you need are in the file. They are photocopiable (as is nearly everything on this website).
I do this lesson early in the semester. Then I scatter "happiness/positive psychology ELT" activities throughout the course.
A week or two after doing "happiness dictation", I sometimes give out the tasksheet again. In pairs, students see if they can remember the content and write the missing words. They helps them review and remember.
Sometime later in the semester, I do the "Happiness Haiku" consolidation activity. This recycles the same ideas but, since students are writing haiku poems, it requires deeper processing that just writing sentences.
Most of the dictation sentences are easy to understand but, in sentence 5, "forgive" is often an unknown word. I teach in Japan. Here is a version of the dictation sentences that include the word " 許す " (yurusu) in Japanese. Here is a version that has "용서햐다" (yongseohada) in Korean. This one has "memaafkan, mengampuni " in Bahasa. This one has !मा गन (Māpha garnuhōs) in Nepali नेपाली
नेपाली
This activity from Marc's 2019 ABAX reference book is HERE.