Ice Breaking Skills

Making friends and socialising in English can be very challenging, so if you are going to parties or having English speaking friends around it's a good idea to start developing a few 'ice-breaking' social skills. A nice way to entertain people and get to know them better is to offer to do a Tarot reading for them.

Tarot cards have been around for centuries and have and still are used as a way to help people understand their problems and to think about their future. Most people think they are a harmless form of entertainment, but others do take them very seriously. There are also some people who due to their religious beliefs object to them, so never try to force someone to have a reading if they object.

Today's task is to learn a little about Tarot cards and how to read them. This is also a very good listening task to develop your ability to listen for specific information.

Task:

Get a pencil and some paper ready so that you can make notes. Then go to: http://www.monkeysee.com/play/1892-basic-tarot-card-reading here you will find a series of videos teaching you how to use Tarot cards.

This is the first of the videos telling you about the cards


Watch each video and make notes about the meaning of each card. At the end of the first video go to: http://www.paranormality.com/tarot_meanings.shtml where you can click on the cards that have been mentioned and check your notes. You'll need to work through all of the videos before you are able to do a complete reading.

It is better to watch one video each day than to try to watch them all at once. If you would like to get some idea of the kind of language used when giving a reading you could get your own reading from: http://www.facade.com/tarot/

I hope you enjoy this activity. You may not become a great Tarot card reader, but by doing the activity you will improve your listening and reading and learn a little more about a cultural phenomenon that has been around for over a thousand years.

Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL activities or try another video based activity.
Related links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Nick
I am a fan of yours in Mexico city. I am an English language teacher at highschool level. I belong to the learning with computers yahoo group and have learned a lot from you.
I am interested in the books you have published on technology and learning English.
Could you give tell me what is the publishing house?

Nik Peachey said...

Hi Elena

It's great to have a fan in Mexico city and I'm really glad you find my blogs useful. Unfortunately I no books or publishers for me. May be in the future I'll produce one based on my blogs. Would be nice to have the time to do that and publish it as a free download. Oh 'had we but world enough and time'.

Best

Nik

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