Revisiting language Observation Game - Watching, Reading, Speaking
This activity works well with a video clip linked to cultureor festivals – so a party, an event , a festival, a journey through the targetlanguage country, a visit to a famous place or town in the target languagecountry.
At the start of the year it is a great activity to use with moving on learners to revisit familiar language and take a tour around the taret language country or set the scene for the academic year's learning with a cultural focus.
So select your video clip stimulus material!
Watch the clip carefully and select the key words (nouns,adjectives, verbs will all work well here!)
It's a game that I have played lots of times with all age groups of learners.Works well with adult learmers too.
You can revisit know language, practise new language or investigate unknown language using a bilingual dictionary first .....
Game One
Give each child five word cards. Each word is a noun of anobject, place, person or building they will see in the video.
Ask the children towatch the video clip and pick up a specific word card and wave it when theythink they have seen one of the five words they have in front of them.
Ask the children to then share their order of the writtenwords cards with a partner, by saying them in the order they have placed themand as they observed them appear on the video clip
Game Two
Working in pairs give them all the noun cards. The object ofthe game is to place the nouns face down in a pile when they see that object.Each partner should be holding 9 cards or have 9 cards face upwards on thetable so that they can see the words. When they see one of their objects , they place the correct word card in agrowing pile of cards.
After they have watched the whole video clip, they shouldcompare the words in their pile with those of another pair. They must carefully pick up the pile. Turn it face up andtake it in turns to read the noun at the top of the pile. Once read they shouldput this word at the bottom of the pile. Do both pairs have the cards in thesame order?
Report back
Can the pairs now create a tourist information report usingthe phrase e.g. “ A Paris il y a + nouns” in their pile , in the order they saw theplaces and objects etc.
Volunteer pairs to say their “Tourist information report” tothe class.