Topic 1.11.2 Phone Problems
PHONE PROBLEMS
1.Warm up
- Have you ever had a problem with your phone? What happened?
- What do you do if your phone battery dies, and you have no charger?
- What common phone problems do people have?
- Have you ever lost your phone? What did you do?
- Have you ever had a problem with a phone app? What happened?
- Have you ever called the wrong person by mistake? What did you say?
- What do you do if your phone gets wet?
2.Expressions
Look at the following expressions.
Which do we normally use on a landline? A mobile? Or both?
- “We seem to be breaking up.”
- “I need to charge up my phone.”
- “Can you speak up? The line’s not very good.”
- “I can’t hear you very well.”
- “The signal is very weak here.”
- “My battery is almost dead.”
- “I think there’s a problem with the network.”
- “Sorry about that. I just went through a tunnel.”
- “I think we got cut off.”
3. Practice exercises
4. Responses
Which of the problems in Exercise 2 would you respond to with each of the above suggestions? More than one suggestion can be used to respond to the same problem.
5. Role play
In pairs, practise a telephone conversation. Create technical problem ‘noises’, e.g. bleeps, interference, etc. and practise the expressions above. You may need to call your partner back.
6.Communication difficulties
7.Role play
In pairs, practise the same telephone conversation from Exercise5. This time, create communication difficulties e.g. by speaking too quietly, too quickly, explaining something in a complicated way, etc.