How to play the game:
Students will play this game in teams of 3-4 people. They will number off within their groups, so that everyone will know the order of who would be the designated speaker. When the game starts, one student from each team will grab an envelope from the front table, and take it back to their team. The team will translate the sentence together. When they are ready, the designated speaker will raise their hand. A teacher will come to the designated speaker, and they will recite the sentence in English. If the sentence is spoken correctly, the student (designated speaker) and the teacher will janken. The loser has to do the task in the sentence. After that, a student will record the win/loss on the blackboard (see #2 in "how to run the game" section), put the envelope back and grab a new envelope for the next designated speaker.
Prep:
Before class: print out the 15 Japanese sentences, cut them into individual strips of paper, and put each sentence into an envelope. It helps to print them on thicker (construction?) paper if you have a lot of classes, and will need to run the game many times.
In class: before class/the game starts, lay out all 15 envelopes on the front table and draw a giant 15 (number of envelopes/sentences) by 8 (number of teams) grid on the blackboard where everyone can see.
How to run the game:
Explain the game to the students. Maybe show them a sentence in one of the envelopes and give them a demo of what they will do. (3-4 minutes)
Tell the students to keep track of the number of times they win/lose by using the grid on the blackboard that you drew before class (see point 2 in prep section). For example, when they win a number, write a O (maru) in the corresponding square in the grid; when they lose, write a X (batsu) in the corresponding square.
Give them a limited amount of time to play the game. Set a timer and let it run to zero while they play. (15-20 minutes)
When the timer goes off, ask everyone to sit down. Make a note of which team finished all 15 sentences, which team won the most O (marus), etc. (1-2 minutes)
Other notes:
For time reference: I gave my classes 17 minutes to play the game, and only one group in each class was able to finish all 15 sentences.
This was a game that was originally in Englipedia, but I can't find it under the Englipedia Archive account, so I'm re-contributing it to this website. (A predecessor at my school printed out the instructions from Englipedia and kept it in a file for everyone.) I also changed the original game slightly to make it work for my classes.
The original Englipedia game had the student do the task when they lost, but the teacher/alt wouldn't have to do the task when they lost. How you want to play the game depends on your comfort level, but both I and my JTEs had a great time playing with the students, and didn't mind doing the silly tasks. You can also (obviously) change the tasks according to your/your students' comfort level.
July 12, 2023 edits:
- I found that this game also works well for the imperative grammar point in NH1 - Unit 4 Part 1 (p. 38). So I've attached the document for that point as well. (ex."Drink water." or "Please drink water." or "Let's drink water.")
- This game also worked well in my special education classes where the class size was 5. I gave each student a Japanese sentence, a couple of minutes to figure out the English sentence. After that, one student at a time read their English sentence to the group, the entire group (teachers included!) janken'ed, and the one loser did the task. With 15 sentences, we were able to do three rounds, and it took about 20 minutes to finish.
Thanks for sharing! My 3rd years loved this activity.
@lazypanda13 yay! happy to hear that. : )
I want to play this game but I'd like the direct translations if possible because Google translate is questionable sometimes and I don't want to show my jte as yet