The host prepared two kinds of cards. One is the uncomplete sentences, and the other, for each is words and phrases that can be used to fill in the uncomplete sentences. Each of us have to draw five W&P cards out to our hands, and at the same time, someone chooses a card from the sentence bunch and put it in the middle of the desk. Players are required to think about which card in their hands is the best, in other words, the funniest or the most proper for that sentence and then give it out. The one who choose the sentence before decides who is the winner and give the sentence card to her. In the next round, the last winner has the privilege to choose sentence card and pick up the winner. The person who owns most sentence cards is the biggest winner.
The target for this game is to make up the sentence in the best way. It not only asks you to know about the meaning, but also, you have to let out your creativity to make it the funniest. I learn many difficult words from the game such as medical terms though not memorized all. In general, it gives a big mount of input and about 75% of them are comprehensible. I enjoyed the process very much because the seemed-unrealistic- connection between concepts are rather amusing and refreshing. Everyone was participating very passionately. Thus, there pops out output. Through the game, we communicate a lot because sometimes we do not know some terms or connections and we will also laugh at some. I like it!
Who killed Robin Koch?
Similar to what the host bring us before, this time we focused on another murder case of which the victim is called Robin Koch. Each of us were given a piece of paper giving the basic information about this case. Also, the host distributed each three characters that have more or less some relationships with the victim and who might be suspicious. After reading our characters, we picked up our name cards and communicate clues together. Then the host took out a puzzle game sheet that include questions about the case, and we the investigators would hurry to search for the keys. With the keys together, we should finnaly come up with the murderers name. However, it might take longer time than expected.
The biggest target is to find out the murderer and answering the questions in the puzzle sheet is the small target. The targets are clear. It might be helpful to give some guidences before we read the characters information, for example, how are they related to R.K. or what might be their motivation, so that we can understand each others characters better! The input is obviously more than the output. Reading seemed to occupy a lot of time. I think it will be better if there are less characters and in that way we could solve the problem in a not-so-difficult way. Still, I learned many new words from reading!
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 6 Reflections for Dextrous
This game was hilarious. Everyone get to keep five cards that have various answers and when choose the question; we had to show one card that has certain answer. Then the one who suggested the question get to choose the funniest answer and the owner of the answer get the question card. The person who has the most cards wins the game. This game was not just a question and answer card game. The cards have so many questions and answers that are funny, satire, and serious.
There were some words that we could not understand. However, we helped each other figuring out the definition by asking questions and looking up the meaning together.
I think this game was very helpful for our speaking because in order to play the game smoothly, we had to keep speaking in order to explain the reason for the answer and explain whatever we do not understand. This game was so fun that I want to play again.
Who Killed Robin Koch?
This activity was a deductive game. We had to find the criminal who killed Robin Koch. Everyone got some list of suspects, and by telling others with reasons we had to figure out the suspect together. This game was quite similar with the last game the host prepared. However, this game is more complex and require more speaking.
As the last activity, we could speak a lot in order to discuss about the clues. However, I think this activity is quite too similar with the last game as it is under the same category of deductive. I think it would be much better if we had quite different styles.
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Snob
Date:
RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 6 Reflections for Dextrous
There are two type of cards; black cards with blanks in sentence and white with word and phrases. The rule is simple. One player picks the black card which has blanks in a sentence then the other player pick a white card that suits on the blank while explaining why it is the best for the blank. The player who picked the black card chooses whos card is the funniest and makes sense. We had many rounds it was very fun.
This activity was designed for groups of twenties because of vocabulary. The vocabulary was not academic but casual. To be honest, it was too casual for me to understand their joke or expression. Also it contains medical terminology so I would say the content was not that easy. The host tried to get rid of certain inappropriate vocabulary but I restrained her because I wanted to learn some of them. In terms of speaking activity, we talked and laughed a lot. After filling out the blank, I should explain why it fits. In other words, we practiced the reasoning expression.
Who killed Robin?
Again, I was the host of guessing game. It was the upgraded version of the activity elementary my dear Watson. There are more things to consider and it requires more speaking activity to figure out who is the murderer. The previous activity didnt create equal amount of opportunity to speak. Before I started this reflection, I should say it was more like a reading activity rather than speaking activity, which made me feel so frustrated while doing this activity.
This activity was designed for 16 people who act as suspects, but I adapted this for six investigators who are working on this case. I expected that
The players are all the police man and I handed out descriptions of three suspects to each person and let them read. It took around 5 minutes and I think I should have shrink the number of suspects in order to reduce the reading part. While reading, they didnt look interesting or happy at all. Instead, they were struggling with reading, which makes me felt as if something wrong happened.
After reading, I didnt give them the answer sheet A at the beginning of the activity because I expected that they would have focused on finding the answer of those questions on the sheet. I rather wanted them to talk what information they got and who is the most suspicious. I asked each person who is the most suspicious. I think it would have been better if I asked them to briefly report just who they are and who is suspicious and why. The question I asked was not enough to induce them to speak more.
After reporting, I handed out the answer sheet A so they started to talking about what answer they have. Some had difficulties to find out the answer, so I gave them a hint such as who has an information of the wifes parents. Then, they found out Martin was the murder. I wish the contents of suspects would have had more clue on who is the murderer in order to let them talk and discuss more.
Overall, I think the former activity was more interesting and had more situation to talk. Next time, I will prepare less reading activity.
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 6 Reflections for Dextrous
On the sixth week, we did two activities: Cards against Humanity and Who Killed Robin Koch? I think both of activities were helpful to teach English speaking.
Cards against Humanity
This activity is the most creative activity I have ever done. Students should get five cards that have various answers. Then, one group member should pick one questions like 'When I do _____, I think ______'. Other group members should make the answer by using one of five cards. One group member should pick the most creative answer and the student who gave the most creative answer will continue this activity. The answer cards have a lot of funny and straightforward. I think this activity is related with Corpus Linguistics and it is really helpful to learn 'reasoning' sentences. First, all of these words are really universal to native speakers. Although most of them are not that appropriate in classroom, it is really helpful to study 'real-life' languages. Second, this activity needs making reasons Students should find similarities and differeces between two words and make some reasons. After students study "____ is ____ because...", it can be used very effectively.
Who Killed Robin Koch?
This activity is similar with "Elementary, My Dear Watson". Students should have some list of suspects and alibais, and students should find the criminal by using lists. I think this activity is not that bad, but not creative because we did lots of inference activities. However, I think it can also be helpful to use with making some reasons like 'Cards against Humanity'. Because this activity needs making reasons like 'I think ___ is criminal because according to alibai...' Such as ornithologist, It has more harder words than 'Cards against Humanity' activity and I think it is approproate to upper-intermediate level students. Lots of words were a little bit difficult and this activity needs some complicated deduction. Moreover, students should support their deduction by matching some allibais or talking with other group members.
One activity was new and Another activity was really familliar. I think both activities were appropriate to intermediate level students, not beginner level students. Former one is appropriate to lower-intermediate level students because it dosen't require difficult words. However, latter one is appropriate to upper-intermediate level students. As I said before, the words and expressions were harder than the first activity and it needs lot of insight and deduction ability.
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 6 Reflections for Dextrous
I think this activity can be pedagogically applied well. Each students are given 5 cards, and we have to put one card for each turn. When the runner picked the question card, which has the blank in it, rest members put one card that she think the most appropriate to the blank. The runner picked one answer among five, and then owner of that picked card become the host.
It was a best activity to draw creativeness from students, because students dont have to put the answer card that fit into the common sense. More creative and fun the card content is, the more probability yours are picked. However, in the pedagogical viewpoint, I think some of the card content need to be fixed. Some contents contain sexual, impersonal things, which can be a problem if it is used for young students. Therefore, it would be perfect education game if theres some modification.
2. Who Killed Robin Koch?
This time she prepared inferencing game again, but this time we didnt do as a team. Each person get three name cards. In card threre are characters name and his/her suspicious actions at that night that the murder had happened. Particularly, each character have connection with other characters in their relationship. What we have to do here is to find murderer by connecting these relationships.
At first I didnt know what to do because I have to think in the representation of three characters, and I dont know how to use these relationship connection. However, when the host began to be in this game to help us, we get know what to do. Although the giving question and answer, and inferencing didnt work very well, (I think it was because of time limit, if theres more time, the game would be more participating.) the questionaire that the host prepared for hint worked well! In the process of answering to those questions, we finally started to inference about who is the murderer. This game would be so hard to young students, but it would be suitable for the adult learners who can consider and infer deeper.
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 6 Reflections for Dextrous
For week 6, I prepared the game Cards against Humanity. There were a few reason beings for this. For the last activity I created, I realized that my group members thought it was a bit confusing and difficult, in terms of rules and how to play. It was supposed to be a game for an active and critical discussion, and lots of persuasion, which I thought went well, especially in terms of active discussion. However, I realized that my group members found it difficult making up stories, which made them focus mainly on the stories behind the characters, rather than persuasion. This is why I thought Cards against Humanity would be a great activity, since it requires persuasion, in order for their white cards (the one with words) to be picked, which allows them to pick the next black card (Questions).
Overall, I think the choice of activity for this round of material hostings was very appropriate. It seemed like everyone quite enjoyed the game! I tried getting rid of as many inappropriate word cards and difficult, or culture-based words as possible, but there were still some left that I couldnt get rid of (since I printed out 30 pages worth of words, there were way too many!) However, everyone seemed to enjoy them, and we even got the chance to look up some of the harder vocabulary, which was nice because although it wasnt meant to be that way, but it allowed us to learn new words as well! There were less persuasion than I expected, since I expected a very active persuasion and discussion. However, there were still a sufficient amount of conversation and persuasion, which I was really happy about.
In terms of applying comments from group members feedback, everyone took the game a lot more easily and faster compared to the last activity I designed, meaning that they had little to no difficulty with the instruction of the activity. When deciding which activity to bring in, the one thing that I considered the most was the level of difficulty in terms of instructions, since almost everyone mentioned in their reflections that my activity from week 3 was difficult, because they had trouble understanding the instruction. Also, some people mentioned that their role was a bit more challenging than the others, so I made sure that there are no specific roles to be played in this activity. There are, surprisingly, many different ways people play this game, such as the one with a role where one person just acts as the judge and chooses the black cards, and who wins each round. However, I specifically chose the version where everyone participates, and the one choosing questions and deciding changes each time as their cards are picked. I think this also motivated people to persuade and explain their cards more, since they all wanted to pick the card at one point or another.
Another thing about this activity is that it was more of a close-ending activity, where there is a specific winner at the end, compared to the other activity where there was no specific answer or winner. This made the game a bit more interesting and made the group members participate more, just as taking the role of the judge did. Overall, Im far more satisfied with the result of this than my first material! Yay!
The second activity we played was a detective game, solving a murder case. We each got 3 different characters to represent, who were all suspects of the murder case. Then, we got together to discuss which character is the most suspicious. The character informations/characteristics were very interesting, and all of them were looking pretty suspicious, making it more fun to figure out who the actual murderer was. However, because we each had three different characters, it was difficult to go through everything, so we couldnt really figure out anything from the characteristics itself. So then we used the clues to figure out the real murderer. Then, we tried to find out where the victims will would be. However, this also took a long time since we had to go through a lot of clues of different suspects. We almost didnt figure out, but we eventually did by the end of class, which was fun! I think this was great, since it involved a lot of active conversations/discussions throughout the entire activity. It also involved quite a bit of reading as well, which kind of took a while, but to think about using it in a real class setting, where students are comparatively younger, I think this would be a great way of incorporating both reading and speaking together in a single activity!
