You might have only two students do this activity, or you might have the whole class doing it, in which case the taxpayer-CCRA staff person pairs could change after every call. Learners can switch roles (CCRA staff people becoming taxpayers and vice versa); for this purpose, we have created Taxpayer B pages, with different profiles.

We recommend that you go through one or two "calls" with the students before they begin to work on their own. The taxpayer can start the call by saying "ring, ring". Encourage learners to greet and say goodbye to each other as they would if this were a real phone conversation. We recommend that you visit them during the activity, to ask about strategies they may have developed to make the "calls" more efficient (see "Things that Come Up", below), and to answer questions they may have.

The taxpayer pages set up eight phone requests. This is intentionally a lot, so that students can refine their banter and strategies for confirming that the addresses are correct, and the CCRA staff person can practice scanning the list of cities to become faster at it. If you think this is too much practice, then simply don't give out the last one or two pages. Or, do give out all of the pages, and if the students say there is too much repetition, then talk about it. You might discuss the monotony of having to answer similar phone requests over and over, and how a person who does that as part of their job might welcome a system of recorded messages.

Items that might come up:

• For some letters it helps to say, for example, "p as in potato," or "S as in Saturday."

• Is it better to write the full name of the province or the abbreviation?

• The caller can repeat the whole address at the end to confirm that he/she has it right.

• To find a place name quickly, the CCRA staff person can look in the list for just its first letter.

• Why don't the tax centres have street addresses?