It's my second year of running conversation (technically, speaking) classes at University and one thing I've learnt over the past year and a bit is that a conversation class must be more than just 'discussing' things. There are many elements of conversation, and the ability to discuss things, is only one of those elements.
I began to list some of the other communicative uses of speech and one of the most interesting things to appear was - lying...
Lying is an essential part of communication and whilst many of the 'skills' in lying are probably quite universal, I nevertheless thought it would be interesting to integrate the component of lying into an English class.
Whilst watching 'Would Ilie to you?' one day, I decided I liked the idea of a team of contestants concocting two false stories alongside a true story and then the opposite team sifts the truth from the lies. I used a book donated to me by somebody a long time ago, titled '1000 English Idioms Explained' and I selected 12 quite unusual idioms to use in my classroom recreation of the comedy panel show. The book is a beauty because it often details the unusual aspect of history or culture from where the idiom is derived.
I created this list of idioms plus true stories.
(Please feel free to use this in your attempts to recreate my ideas in your classroom)
In class I normally split the teams into girls versus boys and give them half an hour to come up with the most convincing alternative definitions or histories. This game is great because people really get into the fabrication of the alternative stories coming up with some really interesting but painfully untrue lies. Once the teams have come up with their 'lies' I get them to pitch at each other and points are awarded for each lie detected. The winning team obviously has bragging rights being the best 'liars', normally, the girls win.
Whilst playing the game you can really see the students get into controlling their body language, throwing bluffs and other sorts of deceptionary tactics.
Plus, this can provide excellent sources of discussion topics after the game has finished - 'Who liesbetter? Men or Women?', 'What are the signs of a liar?', etc...
Give it a try!
p.s. Of course, people have since informed me this type of game looks more like 'Call my bluff' than 'Would I lie to you' but I don't care, my original inspiration came from the latter...
If you're unsure what the finished result should look like in your classroom, watch this!
I began to list some of the other communicative uses of speech and one of the most interesting things to appear was - lying...
Lying is an essential part of communication and whilst many of the 'skills' in lying are probably quite universal, I nevertheless thought it would be interesting to integrate the component of lying into an English class.
Whilst watching 'Would Ilie to you?' one day, I decided I liked the idea of a team of contestants concocting two false stories alongside a true story and then the opposite team sifts the truth from the lies. I used a book donated to me by somebody a long time ago, titled '1000 English Idioms Explained' and I selected 12 quite unusual idioms to use in my classroom recreation of the comedy panel show. The book is a beauty because it often details the unusual aspect of history or culture from where the idiom is derived.
I created this list of idioms plus true stories.
(Please feel free to use this in your attempts to recreate my ideas in your classroom)
In class I normally split the teams into girls versus boys and give them half an hour to come up with the most convincing alternative definitions or histories. This game is great because people really get into the fabrication of the alternative stories coming up with some really interesting but painfully untrue lies. Once the teams have come up with their 'lies' I get them to pitch at each other and points are awarded for each lie detected. The winning team obviously has bragging rights being the best 'liars', normally, the girls win.
Whilst playing the game you can really see the students get into controlling their body language, throwing bluffs and other sorts of deceptionary tactics.
Plus, this can provide excellent sources of discussion topics after the game has finished - 'Who liesbetter? Men or Women?', 'What are the signs of a liar?', etc...
Give it a try!
p.s. Of course, people have since informed me this type of game looks more like 'Call my bluff' than 'Would I lie to you' but I don't care, my original inspiration came from the latter...
If you're unsure what the finished result should look like in your classroom, watch this!
English Teacher X's new book -- SPEAKING ACTIVITIES THAT DON'T SUCK, no available on Smashwords and Amazon.
ReplyDeletehttp://englishteacherx.blogspot.com/2011/11/third-book_13.html