Here’s a quick speaking game that encourages collaboration and improvisation. It was designed to help students practise FCE speaking part 3, but would be suitable for general English classes too.
The cards you need to play the game can be downloaded by clicking here.
Full instructions are below, but here’s a quick video to demonstrate:
Instructions
Divide your class into pairs or groups of three. Give each group a set of question cards and location cards. They take one question card and place it face up, then take five location cards and place them face up. They are given a moment to read the question and think about their response.
Then, students have two minutes to discuss the question together. After two minutes ask students to stop and then give them one minute to decide which is the best (or worst for the drawback questions). Students then draw a new set of cards and start again.
Support
Before and during the activity give students the language they need to help them express their opinions, give reasons and take turns by asking each other questions. Start with an example question on the board for the whole class to do together and write some useful expressions on the board.
I think that having a [ ] would be really beneficial because… what do you think?
I think that having a [ ] in the city centre would be useful because … what about you?
I can’t think of many benefits of a [ ], can you think of any?
When students are playing the game add more chunks of language between rounds and draw their attention to it. Monitor and pick phrases to help their specific problems like interrupting, disagreeing politely or reaching conclusions.
Adaptation
You can use the same cards to play a game I wrote about in a previous post. In this case the judge would give the point to the player with the best or most creative answer.
The game can be a little silly at times (in one game students had to think of ways in which a nightclub could be used to help educate children) but this is intended to be a fun speaking activity. You can download the Powerpoint version of the cards here if you’d like to make any changes.
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March 3, 2017 at 2:04 pm
Nice activity! Thanks so much for sharing – I will try it with my FCE class tomorrow. Anything to gamify speaking activities really helps motivate my teen students, so I think they will enjoy this. Cheers
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April 6, 2017 at 3:41 am
Thanks for sharing. Nice one! However, some aspects seemed unclear to me. I didnt find the instructions to do the activity clear enough. Especially when you shared this
“Then, students have two minutes to discuss the question together. After two minutes ask students to stop and then give them one minute to decide which is the best (or worst for the drawback questions). Students then draw a new set of cards and start again.”
Who will decide which is the best answer? who is the judge? start again how? Shall we give them another set of questions and cards?
My apologies for misunderstanding.
regards…
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April 6, 2017 at 12:14 pm
Hi – absolutely no need to apologise!
I think you’re right and the instructions aren’t very clear. It might be because I’m assuming familiarity with the FCE speaking task that it replicates.
I’ll write up some clearer instructions soon. This is also an activity that might benefit from a video demonstration, as it’s much easier to show than to explain.
When I’ve updated the post I’ll let you know.
Thanks for the comment!
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July 13, 2017 at 5:07 pm
Hi Gunel,
Sorry this took so long. I’ve included a video to make the instructions clearer. If your students aren’t preparing for the Cambridge First, then the part about ‘choosing a best option’ is something you can ignore, and instead focus on the discussion.
If you still have questions after watching the video let me know.
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