2023 NOTE: I decided to reduce my presence on the site so I've removed most of the variants of my activities. Rather than posting a template or versions for multiple language points I'm just posting a single version. It's not hard to create one's own.

BASIC PLAY

This works the best as a Write and Race activity. The students are put into groups and each group is assigned or picks a Mario Kart character. I print out two versions of each character card. One for the group and one for the black board.

The game is mostly played in four rounds. It is unlikely you’ll have time for more than that in one lesson. The ALT starts each round by asking question one. The students work in their group to answer the question and then one member rushes to the JT to answer. If the answer is okay they go to the ALT with their character card. The ALT advances their character and asks that student question two. That student then rushes back to their group to convey the answer and again they work together and a new student comes to the teacher with the answer. The process is repeated until all the questions in the round are completed by the group and their kart advances to the goal. All groups will be working at their own pace to answer the questions and once three groups have reached the goal I usually stop the activity although the JT should still check the papers of the last students waiting with answers.

Reward points: 5 for 1st, 4 for 2nd, 3 for 3rd and the remaining teams get 2 points each. I record the points on the board beside or under their character cards.

Next I generally go onto an answer check and after that the bonus rounds. There are bonus point boxes. Any team that wants to risk it can come and pick a box and get points or loss points. I mostly use a tablet so for this part the students can click the boxes they want and record their points on the board. This is meant to be a motivator. Since some groups will never be able to catch up in the main game this can encourage them to continue wanting to participate. To keep the instructions from being too long at the beginning of the game I don’t explain this until after the first round.

After that go onto the next round.

FIVE: CAUSATIVE VERB 6 Questions TEMPLATE

Note I used this last year but found it a little difficult and slow. For this each group gets an information card about a number of characters. On the demonstration screen you click on the sun to see the example info card and the numbers to see the questions as above. Likely clicking the question shows the answer and the answer makes it vanish. Clicking the R shows the points. And the point banner goes to next screen.

SIX CAUSATIVE VERB 2022 Version

This is the first I’ve used the new template. The main difference with the template is before each round the students are shown a BIO of a character. They must either remember it, take notes or if you want to lower the challenge give each group a copy of the BIO. Otherwise it pretty much goes the same as the template. I’ve done it both ways based on how high the teacher wanted to set the challenge. I personally think it works best if the students make Japanese memos after seeing the bio on the screen and then use that to answer the questions. One difficult point. The students have a hard time hearing ‘doesn’t’ and ‘does’ and get mixed up with questions such as ‘What does Mario let him do?’. I suggest going over it a bit when you show the BIOs and make sure they know they need to listen to the different between does and doesn’t.

Files:

Medium files (requires an account to download) -

More information

5. Mario Kart 'We let you play this game' Causative Verb (6 question rounds).docx (1.65 MB)

5. Mario Kart 'We let you play this game' Causative Verb (6 question rounds).pptx (16.5 MB)

6. Mario Kart 2022 'They make us play the game' MAIN.pptx (7.64 MB)