Activity

The boy sleeping on his desk is...

Students try to identify the students of a class full of slackers by listening or reading to descriptions.

This is an old chestnut from Englipedia, but I'm unable to find the original activity in the archive. It centers around a humorous image of a class, but I don't know the origin of it. If it's not okay to use on the site, let us know and we'll remove it.

I start out by passing out the picture to each student (the file called "Unruly class picture"). It's funny enough to where it gets the students' attention right away. They usually point out that there's not one serious student in the class.

If I'm doing the activity as a listening activity, I read the first hint to the class and ask the students to identify which student I'm talking about: "Hideki is laughing" for present continuous or "The boy laughing is Hideki" for reduced relative clause. The correct answer is J, so I usually note that and then tell the class to listen to the rest. I try to read each sentence two times and then when I finish, I ask if the students want to hear any of them again. Asami and Mako are easy to mix up, so I emphasize that Asami is wearing boots. You may need to point out that "pants" doesn't refer to undergarments in English. Once I've given any repeat sentences that need to be said, I check the answers with the class.

If I want to change it to a reading activity instead, I print out page 2 or 4 from the "Unruly class students" file. The students will need to read the list and identify the student.

I'd recommend that if any of the students have the same name as one of the students in the activity, you should change it. If it's a student who's comfortable making gags and being the center of attention then it might be okay, but it's up to your judgement. If you don't see the class frequently enough to know every student's name, you could change the names to common English names.

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Submitted by Jake W December 5, 2018 Estimated time: 15-20 minutes
  1. HTemple March 2, 2022

    I might recommend changing the 「ふざけるな!」 bit. I tried to use this worksheet, and my JTE didn't say anything to me at first, but later scrapped the activity plan(after I had already printed them all -.-). I don't know for sure why she didn't want to do it in the end, but my wife told me later that it apparently can be pretty rude to say that to someone. Maybe 「"静かにして!"」or something is more safe. That being said, I like the activity!

  2. Jake W March 2, 2022

    Unfortunately that's part of a static image embedded in the Word document. It might require some strategic white-out on the print before it goes off to the copier!

  3. Miles March 2, 2022

    Could always just plonk it into Paint and remove it that way, or with some tactical opaque white shape placements on the Word file itself to cover it up. Bit convoluted but it'll get it gone. Then you can put something a bit more polite in its place.

  4. helincopter August 1, 2022

    You can just use the draw feature in Word dox., use a white marker and erase the "fuzakeruna" part. Then you can write in whatever you like manually by pen or insert word text before you make copies!

  5. AsakawaSune October 4, 2022

    This looks great! My JTE was fine with the wording in the pic but I changed the word order in the sentences a bit. eg. From ''Asami is the girl listening to music." to ''The girl listening to music is Asami.'' at their request.

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