It’s almost Christmas and I haven’t seemed to find the right Christmas ad I usually post around this time of the year. Maybe it’s because I feel a little p…. off and don’t feel Christmassy yet. In any case, I’m going to be doing some Christmas tongue twisters as a way in which learners can work on different aspects of their speaking skill. The ten below are the ones I’ve chosen as this year I’m teaching intermediate levels. 

How am I going to use them?

Well tongue twisters show many of those ‘strange’ features that make English such a challenge for learners. For starters, we’ve got homophones like reign and rain which phonetically would be /reɪn/.

Then we’ve got a set of words that sound very similar, but are in fact different. An example is ‘soot’ and ‘suit’ where the longer vowel sound in ‘suit’ frequently remains unnoticed. I’ll also work on the initial ‘t’ sound, which comes out with a lot of air in English. 

Tongue twisters also allow practising sounds that are not in the Spanish language like /h/ and help learners gain fluency and confidence. It’s also something learners can easily do at home alone while getting comfortable with English sounds. 

1. Seven Santas sang silly songs.

2. Santa’s sleigh slides on slick snow.

3. How many deer would a reindeer reign if a reindeer could reign deer?

4. Eight elves eagerly ate everything.

5. Chilly chipper children cheerfully chant.

6. Ten tiny tin trains toot ten times.

7. There’s chimney soot on Santa’s suit.

8. Santa sat slowly on a soft chair with his sack on his back.

9. Hollie hangs holly hoping happy holidays hurry.

10. Santa seems seriously sick since Sally served sour salmon soup.