353. A competitive battle in our classes



This is a post within a thread I contributed for, some days ago, about dictionary games, on the website of Pearson-Longman. Thanks to the author of the following post. – Picture from lego star wars blogspot com




Fernando Diez Gallego,

A new message was posted in the thread "Dictionary Games":

http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/message/2255#2255

Author : Alistair Melliar
Email : alistairm@eircom.net
Profile : http://www.eltcommunity.com/elt/people/voyager

Message:
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This game is a bit different to any others so far, but I've found it works very well - have used it with upper-intermediate and advanced groups only but could be played by intermediate groups with a change of dictionary type preferably.
You have 2 teams, each with a dictionary, the first team starts with letter 'a', opens dictionary with eyes closed in this section, and selects a word from the page opened to ask the other team about. There are 3 possibilities: they can either ask the meaning of the word, how to spell the word selected, or how to pronounce a word spelt out letter by letter. They can select which type of question or you as teacher can tell them which question to ask. If the other team gives a satisfactory answer they get a point. Teams alternate asking questions, the second team starting somewhere well away from 'a' - 'y' is a good place. Team 1 could thus go through sections 'a,b, c,d,' etc and team 2 'y,w,v,u,' etc, thus avoiding inadvertent 'noticing' of the word in their own dictionaries when answering a question. It's best if both teams have an intermediate dictionary, not an advanced one, as this avoids selection of rare words (not therefore so useful for learners), just to try and win more points!
The game has variety because of the different question types - if students don't vary the questions teacher can intervene to get a good selection (a fixed pattern here is probably best: meaning question, followed by spelling, followed by pronunciation) - and they get an in-depth exposure to dictionary entries, with the wealth of information available there. There's the competetive element too of course. With intermediate classes an elementary dictionary might be better, but the point made above about rare words probably wouldn't apply to the same extent - I must experiment with an intermediate class with this game... Fine for classes of up to 15 or so - above 8/10 students you can have 3 teams and organize so all teams get equal numbers of questions. Can also work with a class of 2!

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