Sounds people make

Abi | Dec 15, 2025Dec 12, 2025

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• talk about how people react in various scenarios;
• practise verbs for sounds people make.

In this lesson, students reflect on people’s responses in different situations, explore verbs for sounds (e.g. sob, whimper, mumble) and describe reactions. They discuss how their culture views different behaviours in public and share their opinions and experiences. 

WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY

This lesson starts with a warm-up. Students say what sounds they associate with different situations and places (e.g. early morning, forest, shopping centre). After that, they examine pairs of statements where people react with sounds. Students match the verbs for sounds people make (e.g. gasp, howl, moan) with their definitions. Next, they look at various situations (e.g. a person sees a huge spider) and choose verbs from the previous exercise to describe people’s possible reactions. Students explain their choices. Moving on, they say how people in their culture would react to certain behaviours (e.g. howling with laughter at the theatre) if they occurred in public.

MORE VOCABULARY AND DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students look at more verbs for sounds people make (e.g. babble, chatter, chuckle). They use them to replace parts in sentences about people’s reactions. Afterwards, students reflect on the noises people make, share personal examples and classify them by their social impact and emotional meaning. Moving on, they think of situations which might lead people to make sequences of sounds. Following that, students think about environments (e.g. a classroom full of children, a haunted house attraction) and say which sounds from the lesson they would expect to hear in each.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students complete sentences by choosing the most appropriate verbs for sounds people make. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

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