| ˈaɪ ˈʃʊdə nəʊn ˈbetə |

This song has long been a guilty pleasure, and one that I feel I can admit to now that a reasonable amount of time (27 years!!)  has gone by. I originally just thought of using it for the nice chunks of colloquial language it contains, but then realised I could exploit it for  pronunciation purposes. Specifically, for those  “shoulda, coulda, woulda” phrases that students often have such difficulty saying quickly and convincingly. But of course it would also be a crime to use this song and not discuss the hilariously sartorially-suspect low-budget video……

There are two versions of the worksheet. This one uses translation from L1 to L2 in the first activity, in this case Spanish to English:

I shoulda known better Teacher’s notes L1 version

I shoulda known better Student Worksheet L1

And this is the English-only version:

I shoulda known better Teacher’s notes L2 version

I shoulda known better Student Worksheet L2