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Next update: 24 February 2012

Homophone game

Shaun Dowling, Teacher trainer, Cultura Inglesa, Brasilia

This game is a natural follow on from the Homophone dictation and can be used to help the students practise and remember homophones.

Procedure

Ask 3 volunteers to sit in a chair facing the board ( about 2 to 3 meters away is fine). Each should have a piece of chalk or marker.
Then tell learners they are going to run up to the board and write two versions of the homophone from the word you read out. The one who is the slowest stays seated and the other two can sit back in their original places.
Read out any homophone you feel will be easy for the first 3 participants, for example 'one / won'.
The students should run up and write 'one' and 'won'. The slowest sits back down and the quickest go back to their places. Now 2 other people should come up and the game is repeated.

Note: The game is a competition and should be played in a light-hearted spirit. You don't really want one person losing all of the time so I like to cheat and show the student who is always losing the word so they have a chance of winning.

This game also helps to highlight some sounds which may be particularly difficult for students to hear and write, for example my learners have difficulty when I say the homophone 'heel/heal' / hi:l/ and tend to write 'hill' /hil/ or I may say 'there' and they write 'dare'

Apart from the homophones mentioned in the dictation activity. Here is a further list of homophones I have found particularly useful with my intermediate students.

read / red

steel / steal

tour / tore

rose / rows

weather / whether

mist / missed

hi / high

cereal / serial

scent / cent / sent

bread / bred

dye / die

Board / bored

not / knot

site / sight

higher / hire

mind / mined

sawed / sword

would / wood

break / brake

tire / tyre

heard / herd

some / sum

air / heir

groan / grown

piece / peace

none / nun

allowed / aloud

road / rowed

be / B / bee

root / route

whale / wail

so / sew / sow

he'll / heal / heel

flower / flour

toes / tows

soul / sole

which / witch

bear / bare

deer / dear

bite / byte

here / hear

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