Punctuate it!

As with so many classroom ideas, you can make this one a quickie, or you can turn it into a longer communicative activity.

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for
Punctuation practice

What you need:
A short text or extract from any issue of Spotlight, or the text from Dagmar Taylor's blog post of 24 February 2010; and, if possible, copies of the "Punctuation Today" booklet, free with Spotlight 3/2010. If you want to do the activity as the game described below, you will also need to create multiple cards representing all the individual punctuation symbols.

What you do:
Before the lesson, choose your text and type it out without its punctuation. Make copies for your class.

In the lesson, the simplest version of the activity is to hand out the copies and to get students to fill in the punctuation individually or in pairs.

It's more challenging (and entertaining for you) to dictate the text as a stream of words for the students to write down and subsequently punctuate. You could get students to do this in pairs, taking it in turns to dictate short texts to each other.

To make this into a communicative discussion activity, you will need to put a price on punctuation. Give each group a budget (in whatever currency you like, real or imaginary). Each group needs a treasurer, who keeps count of how much of the budget has been used up. Position yourself (the punctuation peddler) centrally in the room and display your wares (commas, full stops, etc., drawn on cards and for sale at various prices). Hand out the unpunctuated text to small groups, who then have to discuss how much punctuation they will need to complete the text, and what they can afford. They buy the cards, but should still mark the punctuation in their text.

At your table, receive representatives from the various groups and sell them puncuation symbols. You may want a copy of the "Punctuation Today" booklet to lend out for a fee. As you have a complete monopoly of the business, you can change prices at will, remove items from sale, offer preferred customers better deals, and generally be completely unpredictable.

After a certain time is up, the groups should compare what they have spent. Take the annotated texts in to check, then hand them back out again for a language feedback round. The groups may also want to do internal group feedback on how each team worked, and they may all want to give you some feedback on your performance as the punctuation peddler.

Show them the phonetic pronunciation video in Dagmar's blog to finish off the lesson.