Video transcript
Want a quick, no prep game to liven up your class?
It’s great for practising question forms and it’s very easy to explain and play. The basic rule is that one person is in the ‘hot seat’ and the others ask them questions. There’s only one rule. The person answering can say anything EXCEPT ‘YES’ or ‘NO’. This sounds ridiculously easy, but it actually isn’t.
That’s the basic idea and you might want to just take it and run with it - after you subscribe just down there of course. If, though, you’d like a bit more info on setting it up and making it work more effectively, keep watching.
I’m Jo Gakonga and if we haven’t met before, I’ve been teaching for longer than I care to remember (I’m very old), I’m a CELTA and MA TESOL tutor and I’ve got a website at ELT-training.com where I make material like this for English language teachers at all stages of their careers.
If you DO know me and haven’t hit that ‘Subscribe’ button yet, what are you waiting for?
This activity will work at any level above elementary but getting them ready for it, especially at lower levels will make it go really well. Put learners in pairs and ask them to brainstorm a list of questions that have a yes/ no answer. These could be factual, such as ‘Is Sydney the capital of Australia’ or personal ‘Are you from China?’. Challenge them to write as many as they can in a set time (maybe 5 minutes). You monitor and help them with any language they need.
Now explain the rules of the game to them. Give them a question- ‘Is Sydney the capital of Australia?’ and ask them how they could answer it WITHOUT SAYING NO (shame on you if you thought it was!)
You could elicit things like – It isn’t OR Canberra is the capital OR I don’t think so OR I’m not sure.
Now run through an example with the class. Put one of your confident learners in the ‘hot seat’ at the front of the class and let the others ask them questions from their lists. They can say anything except YES or NO and (of course) the idea for the others is to get them to say one of these. Asking the questions quite quickly often works or following up:
Are you from China?
I don’t know (playing safe)
YOU DON’T KNOW?
No
Got you
When they’ve got the hang of it, you can put them in groups of 4-5 to play- in BORs if you’re online- so that more people have a chance to interact.
You could finish up with some error correction of any question forms they got wrong- or not!
Enjoy.
