In Meaningful Action, Underhill explains his concept of the Inner Workbench: the place in our mind where we hear and manipulate inner speech. Putting learners in touch with this place as they convert thoughts to speech, getting them to feel and describe what happens there, may create a memorable experience of speaking for them and a deeper understanding of what learners do in order to speak.

I wrote the instructions on the board:

It’s a simple little activity as you can see. We went through the steps with 5 phrases for agreeing / disagreeing in conversation, I tried to listen for changes in their pronunciation – not easy. I recorded it,listened back and had some questions:

1. How much time should pass in between each stage? I think it’s easy to move on too quickly.
2. What can we do after step 4? I wasn’t really sure what to do in class…