Get 'em to Say It: present perfect; adv. of freq.; others

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 4:05 pm

This is a game for verbal practice of questions and the point of the game is to get another student to say a key word. (verbal practice - meaning they should already have some grasp of the language.)

I have taken some hard card and cut them down to business card size. On one side I write some words I want the students to say:

not yet
just
already

I lay the cards face down on the table. I then draw one card. (Everyone in the groups also takes a card. You can't show the card to anyone.) If my card says "not yet" on it. I try to think of a question I can ask to any one of the members in the group. That will produce the response on the card.

Mark: "Kenta, have you finished all of your homework?"
Kents: "No, not yet."

Yeah! Mark gets to turn his card over for everyone to see and he gets one point and then I would draw another card and continue. The next card says "already."

Mark: "Sayuri, have you eaten breakfast?"
Sayuri: "Yes, I have just eaten breakfast."

Awww, too bad for Mark. But I can keep asking questions to others until I get someone to say what's on my card.

The game continues until it's beginning to get stale or almost all of the cards have been drawn.

I usually let the students ask as soon as they are ready. There is no order to who asks questions. It's a free for all.

The responses are scripted. I generally tell the students that they must answer with one of the following answers written out on the board.

*you don't need to write these out on hard card. You can just print it out on slips of paper.

Other possibilities for this game:

How many times have you...?
never, one time, a few times, many times

How often do you...?
always, often, sometimes, rarely, never (adverbs of frequency)

General vocabulary (for these you can use MES-English small game cards Very Happy

)

What color is ...?
red, yellow, orange, green, blue ...

What is big and gray?
An elephant.

A very versatile game that's easy to prepare and the students like it because there's a challenge there that's not just about getting the English out perfectly.

- Mark