Easy Tongue Twisters for ESL Beginners

http://www.englishcurrent.com/pronunciation/english-tongue-twisters-beginners-
esl/

Level: Beginner to Pre-Intermediate

Focus: Pronunciation
Download: Easy-Tongue-Twisters-ESL.doc

Tongue twisters can be fun to focus on for 5/10 minutes as warm-up or at the end of an English
class.

This worksheet contains 7 English tongue twisters. I made it for the grade 6 students at my
Japanese school. These are not the most difficult tongue twisters in English. The tongue twisters
start easy and get a bit harder by the end of the sheet. A few of them focus on the pronunciation
of L-R sounds (e.g. Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry) and the S-SH sounds (e.g. Sea vs She). This is
useful pronunciation practice for Japanese students of English in particular.

Classroom Activities with Tongue Twisters

Tongue Twister Contest

 First, assign points to each tongue twister according to its difficulty (you can do this by
modifying the worksheet). Write a number of points beside each tongue twister, print it out and
give it to your students.
 Practice them (to start, maybe only work with the top 3 tongue twisters).
 Divide the students in groups of 3 or 4.
 Each group then gets a chance to try one tongue twister. One group member picks a tongue
twister and then says it aloud. After he/she is done, one member from each other groups has a
chance to say it. The team with the student who pronounces it the best gets the points.
 The team who gets the points gets to choose which tongue twister to do next.

Note: Don't let the advanced students take all the turns. Each member should have a turn at
saying a tongue twister.

Tongue Twister Race

Another idea is to have a tongue twister race. After the students are more familiar with the
tongue twisters, you can have them do a race. You need a stopwatch for this activity.

 Put the students in groups.

 Have them do rock-paper-scissors to decide who goes first.
 The members of the first group then tries to say all the tongue twisters, one after another, as
fast as they can.
  The other groups then try to beat this time.
 The group with the fastest time wins.

This activity might be better suited for more advanced students with more complex tongue
twisters that are longer and difficult to say in sequence.

Have fun.

– Matthew Barton / Englishcurrent.com