Light, Light, Right?
By: William Kumai
My university English conversation classes (with an average size of 24 Japanese students) seem to be filled with one game after another. Here I present eight games that require minimal preparation and are high energy. Most can be adapted to different levels and different languages.
Dengon/Telephone Minimal Triples Race. Arrange desks into three columns, all facing forward. Show simultaneously the last student in each column three words taken from a minimal pair difficult for your learners, such as “light, right, light” or “ear, year, year” for Japanese students. The rear students then tap the student in front of them and quietly say the three words. This is repeated until the topmost student of a column volunteers the three words. If incorrect, the next column can attempt the answer. Then each column rotates back one desk with the rear students now at the front. The race is restarted with a new set of three words.
Guess My Emotion. Arrange the desks into large groups (six to ten students in my case). Write a few sentences in English (volunteered by students) on the board and have students translate them into their native language on the board. Then write down 10 to 20 emotions on the board. One student in each group reads the text using one of the emotions. Group members guess the emotion. Then another student reads, and so on. The readings alternate between English and their native language so students can notice how emotions affect the language they are using.
Find the Liar. Divide the students into groups of three to five, ensuring there is an even number of groups. Arrange the desks so that pairs of groups are facing each other. In a pair of groups, let us call one group A and the other group B. Group A goes off to a far corner and decides which member will be the liar as well as the topic of questioning (such as food or vacations). Group A returns and announces the topic. Then for about five to ten minutes, group B asks questions pertaining to the topic. Each member of group A provides an answer. The liar, of course, delivers an untruthful answer! At the end of the session, group B guesses who the liar is. Unfair questions where the answer is known are not allowed (such as, are you a student?). Then repeat the procedure with group B deciding on a new topic and liar. Next, the group pairings are mixed and the sessions begin again.
What’s the Category. Place three chairs at the front facing the class with the board behind them. When three students are sitting in the chairs, write a category on the board such as “things that are red” or things that are heavy. The remaining students shout out examples of the category. The first of the three students to guess the category chooses a student to replace him or her at the front and the session begins again with a new category.
Intercultural Communication. Divide the class into large groups (usually I divide the class into four groups). These are the “cultures.” Each group decides on three communication rules for speaking, such as touch your ear before speaking, fold your arms while speaking, or say “well” in each sentence. The rules should be observable, and groups should avoid rules such as crossing your legs before speaking (cannot be seen if hidden by desks). Each group chooses an anthropologist to visit and observe another culture. The groups conduct a conversation for three to five minutes, incorporating their communication rules as they speak. The anthropologists return to their original groups and explain their guesses as to what the rules are. Then a different member becomes a participant, goes to the other group, and tries to fit into the group discussion for about three to five minutes. If the participant breaks a rule, at the end of the discussion he or she should receive a light punishment, such as having to hum a tune or make a funny face. The process begins again with different anthropologists and participants visiting a different group. Optionally, new rules can be decided as well.
DIY Find Someone Who. Each student cuts a paper in half. Then one of the halves is cut in half again to make three pieces in total. Students label the two small pieces A and B, and the large one C. On A, students write down eight (or more depending on how long the activity should last) facts about themselves. They can be provided with sentence starters such as “I like,” “I have,” or “I can.” Then students mill about, carrying A and B, asking eight students for a fact about themselves. Each fact from piece A should be used only once. On B, the answers are recorded with the interviewed student’s name and fact. When finished, students write a Find Someone Who on piece C using the facts on B. For example, “Who can play a Beatles song on guitar?” or “Who has twenty pairs of shoes?” The students write their name at the top of C for answer checking. Then the C papers are collected and randomly redistributed. The students mill about, asking in English “can you play a Beatles song on the guitar?”or “Do you have twenty pairs of shoes?,” searching for the answers to the Find Someone Who, that is, the students who answered “yes” to those questions.. When done, they can check their answers with the original B paper. Note the different grammar constructs on each of the papers.
Manga Test. Students individually draw a six-panel wordless comic strip on a piece of paper. Have the students sit in pairs. They try to tell the story of their partner’s comic strip (in English!). Then pairings are changed and the process is repeated. Tell students that the exact story is not being tested, but that it is interesting how different students interpret the same comic strip differently. This is known as the “Rashomon effect.”
Human Tape Recorders (Kumai, 2000). Arrange the desks in two concentric circles facing each other. The inner circle students are the tape recorders and the outer circle students are the storytellers. The outer circle begins a story with one sentence which the inner circle writes down. The outer circle rotates one spot. The inner circle reads out the text so far and the outer circle continues the story with one more sentence. The outer circle again rotates one spot and so on until ten to twenty sentences have been recorded (depending on activity time). At this point, the stories are read aloud though many will seem disjointed and strange, which adds to the amusement. The inner and outer circles switch places and the activity repeats. Optionally, the outer circle can give the commands play, stop, record, rewind, fast forward, and pause to the human tape recorders.
These games were designed with fun in mind, but in addition they were designed to guide the class, treated as a complex adaptive system, toward the “edge of chaos” (Kauffman, 1995, p. 26; Kumai, 1999; Kumai, 2021) where learning reaches a peak. This phenomenon is also described as facilitative anxiety (Brown, 2014, p. 15) and the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). Basically, students and their tdynamic interactions create a complex adaptive system from which unpredictable behavior, such as learning, emerges. Complex adaptive systems can be orderly or chaotic, but there is a regime between the two called the edge of chaos which is tuned to produce new emergent behaviors and self-organization. Facilitative anxiety is that tension that provides a motivating force, rather than a debilitative one. The zone of proximal development is the gap between a learner’s current abilities and what is achievable through guidance or interaction.
References
Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching (6th ed.). Pearson Education.
Kauffman, S. (1995). At home in the universe: The search for the laws of self-organization and complexity. Oxford University Press.
Kumai, W. N. (1999). Group dynamics at the edge of chaos: Toward a complex adaptive systems theory of language learning. Journal of Nanzan Junior College, 27, 77-97.
Kumai, W. N. (2000). Complex adaptive systems analysis of “human tape recorders”. Journal of Nanzan Junior College, 28, 49-58.
Kumai, W. N. (2021). Edge of chaos in language teaching. Academia: Language and Literature, 109, 145-161.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
William Kumai is a native of Berkeley, California and has held a variety of jobs, as a physicist at a national laboratory, as a computer programmer for a small company, and as a Nanzan University instructor of English. His research focuses on the intersection of chaos and complexity with foreign language teaching.