Archived from Englipedia.
Originally submitted by Gwyneth Jones on Jan 17, 2011.
DETAILED EXPLANATION:
Explain the main idea using a few of the characters and their descriptions, blown up to A4 size (or whatever size you like). For example, I used Kitty, Kyoko Fukada and Ai Fukuhara. I asked my JTE to choose one and not tell me, then I asked her questions.
- "Does she speak Japanese?"
- "Yes, she does."
- "Does she like sushi?"
- "Yes, she does."
- So, I read out the three "likes", and say "Oh, Kyoko Fukada likes tofu. So, not her!" and put an X next to her name.
- "Hmmm... does she play tennis?"
- "No, she doesn't."
- So I read out the "plays" and cross out Ai Fukuhara, and say "oh - is it Kitty?"
- "Yes, it is!"
Hand out the worksheets. The left hand side has male characters and the right has females. They are the same as each other. So, the first question could be, "Is it a boy or a girl?" Give the students a few minutes to get really excited about the characters. Do another example with your JTE, only this time using all possible characters. Get the whole class to follow and make sure that they understand.
Ask students to secretly choose a character. Students have to interview three classmates and guess who their character is. When they rule out one possible character, they put an X in the box next to them. There are three columns, the first for the first person that they interview, the second for the second etc. They use simple process of elimination, and we of course assume that the characters ONLY like, play and speak the thing that is listed next to them.
Then, go! Students seem to have a lot of fun with this.
VARIATIONS:
- You could create character cards and give them out, secretly, if your students are bad at making decisions and you want a fairer distribution of characters. Or you could set a challenge so that each student has to find one specific character. The first one to guess three could be the winner, although I just set a time limit.
TEACHING SUGGESTIONS:
- Get involved and interview the students, yourself. It usually cracks them up if you choose an opposite sex character, especially one that they wouldn't expect you to choose (I go for Totoro).
TIPS/CAUTIONS:
- As with any interview game, go around to make sure that they're speaking English! This is one game where they can't avoid it as much, whereas in collecting/bingo games they tend to run around calling out "Who is...?" in Japanese.