Listening: Happy Together

This is an activity that I used with my students and had excellent results. It?s an excellent icebreaker.

There?s a song by The Turtles called Happy Together (the one from the Heineken beer tv ad, with Jennifer Aniston). This version of the song is very slow and romantic. There is another version (used on the movie Freaky friday) recorded by a hardcore band called Simple Plan. The song is exactly the same, but the pace is different because one version is hardcore. Both versions can be easily downloaded in programs like Kazaa.

Here is how the activity goes: You have to get the lytrics for the song and scramble the parts. You divide your students into pairs or groups and give each pair/group the scrambled lyrics for the song.

First, you play the Turtles version of the song and ask them to listen (don?t let them start organizing the lyrics at this point). Then, for the second time you play the Simple Plan version, which is much faster and they have to organize the song.

The group/pair that finishes first and has managed to organize the song correctly wins. You can give prizes to the fastest ones, like candy or something, and ask the ones that lose to sing the song for the rest of the class and dance...hahaha

I hope you have fun with this activity!!

Marcia Baroni
From Brazil
[email protected]