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TeachingEnglish Young Learners Activity Book
Activities
Activity 41: Tourist role play
Mohammed Azaza – UAE
Age: 7+
20 minutes Large classes? Yes Mixed level? Yes
Materials: Pictures of famous places in your country/area. A large map of the country/area
in which you live. Tourist props such as a sun hat, camera, sunglasses and so on.
Organisation: Whole class.
Aim: To describe places that the children know both orally and in writing.
Description: Children identify local places of interest to a tourist. They produce short texts
about the places and then role play a tourist visiting the different sites.
Preparation: You will need to find the pictures of famous places in your country/area and a
map for the activity. These can be flashcards, photographs or cut from a magazine/tourist
brochure. You will also need tourist props, or you could make these out of paper/card.
Procedure
1. Show the children pictures of famous places and areas in your country and ask the
children to name them.
2. Choose one of the pictures. For example, for the UAE, it might be the desert.
With the children, build up a text about the desert on the board, creating a
skeleton structure the children can use to describe other pictures:
This is the desert in the UAE.
The desert is very big and very beautiful.
I have been to the desert lots of times.
My favourite thing about the desert is
the peace and quiet.
3. The children choose one of the pictures from Step 1 and write a text of their own.
This can be done individually, or in pairs or groups, depending on the children’s level
and the support they need. The children take it in turns to read out their texts.
4. Show a map of the country/area and stick the pictures and texts in the correct place
on the map.
5. Show the class a picture of a tourist. Ask one of the children to come to the front to be
the tourist. Give the child some props to make them feel like a tourist (for example, a hat,
a camera, sunglasses, binoculars, a guidebook). Give the tourist a pointer too.
6. Ask the tourist to point to four different things on the map and to say where they have
been and to describe the places. The children then take it in turns to take on the role.
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© British Council 2012