Q&A was the book proposal I’ve mentioned that I spent two years polishing up and four years sending around then decided I couldn’t be bothered writing when a medium-sized publisher finally said “Yes”. If I can be bothered finding it on my hard disk and polishing it up a bit, you will get it all for free here instead.

Any Which Way You Can Card Matching

Aim: Controlled practise

Skills: Speaking and listening

Organisation: Pairwork or small groups

Timing: 10- 20 minutes

Materials: Photocopies of sheets cut up into cards, enough for about 10 cards per student, probably made up of random vocabulary from recent classes, maybe with a sprinkling of vocab from future classes or other things you want to cover such as false friends. Alternatively, the vocab can be chosen to be things that are most suitable to go with the grammar or functional you want to practice. The cards could also be or include pictures representing the vocabulary.

Rules/ Procedure

• Deal out 10 cards per S at random.

• S1 lays down a card, asking a question connected to the card and within the restrictions given by the teacher eg. (2nd Conditionals) “What would you do if you found a hippo in your bed?” for the card “hippo”.

• The other S must reply with something connected to one of their own cards and lay that card down eg. “I’d think about it for a long time before taking any action” for the card “take action”.

• If the questioning S accepts that it is a logical answer and represents the true meaning of what’s on the card, the answering S takes the two cards and puts them in front of him or her. This counts as two points.

• If the answering S cannot come up with a reply or his partner fails to accept it, the questioning S takes the one question card and puts it in front of him or her. This counts as one point.

• In the event of disagreements about acceptable answers, the teacher may be brought in as a judge.

• The game finishes when either S finishes their cards.

• The winner is the one having the most cards laying in front of them at the end of the game.

Possible grammar points

Adjectives/ Present Perfect Cont.-Why are you _______.?Because I’ve been _______ing.

Second Conditionals- What would you do if ________?- I would___

3rd Conditionals-Why didn’t you _____?- If I had ______, I would have ___.

1st Conditionals-What will happen/ how will you feel if I _____?- You/ your father/ everybody will _____.

Present Perfect/ Simple Past- Have you ever ______?- Yes, when ______/ before ____.

Possible functional language points

Giving reasons, e.g. “Why have you got a hippo in your bed?”

Advice

Requests and refusing requests

Offers and turning down offers

Invitations and turning down invitations