Phone Skills

Below you will find some resources to help students practice their phone skills.

Practicing phone skills is very important.  Sounds carry differently over the phone, and the student cannot see their interlocutor's face, which makes it even harder to hold phone conversations.  Their getting used to speaking on the phone will allow for better comprehension should they need to place a real life one.

Cell phones only transmit sounds between ~300 Hz and ~3,400 Hz, cutting off parts of sounds that allow to differentiate them – for example making S and F sound very similar – leaving it up to the listener's brain to “fill in” as needed.

NATO Phonetic Alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#Tables

Telephone role-play cards from BBC's British Council: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/telephone.pdf

Telephone role-play cards from https://www.englishcurrent.com/roleplays/roleplay-cards2-telephone/