Having 'learned' the vocabulary & structure - third person + be + adjective - to describe how someone is feeling...and also expanding with 'negative' information with our trusted Everybody Up 2 text book, sorted out word order & spelling heads down if you like; time to take it out for a road test!
Aim of this exercise/task was to make the exchanges real, really quick, making output not only 'correct' but interesting to the listener. To achieve that, I insisted the speaker point to the object card, but look at their listener. In a way, the speaker takes a snapshot of the phrase they are going to use from the card, and uses language independent of the support from memory. I really pushed my students to 'bounce' intonation across their complete utterances (not words 'one by one' drone), and even the most reluctant/shy felt able to let rip as the room was so noisy/fast moving & supportive (want to win the game, after all!).
Beauty of this kind of task is the non-speaker has time to listen to peers, practice what they are going to say & get things organised in their heads...and then cope with the need to repeat, go again etc (which is actually reassuring because they 'can do the first few more easily & focus on the far end of the table - listening to the other group?!). Tip = put the tough words in the middle so you can "pause" and model eg 'excited' with everyone's attention. Monitor subtly - cough if intonation not so great, wave an arm to encourage MORE oomph (technical term!), gesture encouragement (saying something breaks the flow) to inactive players 'on a break', and really encourage every student to have a go!
I think this worked well - our learners usually need something to break the monotony of their school classes to get back to making English real, really useful, with really English speaking powers. What do you think?
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