British food speculating games
British culture/ food vocabulary/ modals of probability and possibility
Use language from the box to respond as your partner asks you about British food that they really don’t know from the list on the pages below.
| Useful phrases for giving vague answers We can check with the waiter, but… As far as I know/ remember,… If it is the same thing that I remember,… If I remember correctly,… (I’ve never tried it but) apparently…/ according to…,…/ someone told me that…/ I read that…/ I’ve heard that… (Judging) (from the name/ from the description), it sounds like/ it seems…(From the photo,) it looks like/ it appears… (I’ve never heard of this) but (judging from…) it’s obviously/ clearly… I (would) guess… I suppose… It’s definitely… It must be… It’s almost certainly… It’s probably… It may (well)/ might (well) be… It could (possibly) be… It can’t be… |
Describing and guessing British food game
Choose a British food or drink but don’t say which one you are thinking of. Give one hint about what you chose. Your partner should then make a guess about what you described, thinking carefully about the level of (un)certainty and using the right expressions above. Tell them if they showed the right level of certainty or not, then give another hint. Continue until there is only one possibility and your partner has guessed correctly or given up. Until that last stage, do not tell your partner if they have guessed the right food or not, just tell them if what they say matches your hints with phrases like those in the box.
| Suggested responses to guesses Yes, that’s possible/ Yes, it could (possibly) be that (because…) No, that’s not possible (for my hint/ hints) because (I said)… Well actually, it could (possibly) be that/ can’t be that, because… I think you can be more certain, because… I don’t think you can be so certain, because… |
Ask first the class and then your teacher about some British food you really wonder about, then match the food to the definitions.
Do the speculating language brainstorming task, then play the same game for other countries’ food.
Roleplay being a host and guest in a British and then an international restaurant.
British food and drink to speculate about
- 99 (cone)
- After Eights
- afters/ pudding/ sweet
- (brown/ pale/ India pale) ale/ bitter/ stout
- apple sauce
- baked potato/ jacket potato
- bangers (and mash)
- (Heinz) (baked) beans
- Belgian bun
- bevvy
- bikkie (dunked in tea or coffee)
- black pudding
- brown sauce/ HP (sauce)/ Daddy’s sauce
- brussels/ sprouts/ brussels sprouts
- bubble & squeak
- builder’s tea (PG Tips, Tetley, Typhoo, etc)
- cheese and biscuits
- chip butty
- chippie/ chippy
- (lamb/ pork) chops
- Christmas pud(ding)
- (sweet/ dry) cider
- cottage pie
- cranberry sauce
- cream tea
- (salt and vinegar/ ready salted/ cheese and onion/ prawn cocktail) crisps
- crumpet
- (apple/ rhubarb) crumble
- cuppa
- custard
- custard creams
- Dairy Milk
- digestive (biscuit)
- Eccles cake/ flies’ graveyard
- (full) English breakfast
- (Coleman’s) English mustard
- faggots
- fish’n’chips
- fisherman’s pie
- Fruit and Nut
- fudge
- G&T
- (Bisto) gravy
- haggis
- high tea
- Hobnobs
- Horlicks
- horseradish (sauce)
- (Lancashire) hotpot
- IPA
- Jaffa (cake)
- jelly (and ice cream)
- Lea & Perrins
- lemon curd
- liquorice (allsorts)
- malt vinegar
- Marmite
- meat and two veg
- mild
- Milky Way
- mince pie/ mince tart
- mint sauce
- off licence
- (Cornish) pasty
- piccalilli
- (Branston) (sweet) pickle
- pickled onion
- (steak and onion/ steak and kidney/ chicken) pie
- pint
- ploughman’s (lunch)
- pork pie
- porridge
- (suet) pud(ding) (e.g. spotted dick or treacle pudding)
- rich tea
- (Sunday) roast
- salad cream
- sandwich spread
- (bacon) sarnie
- sausage roll
- Scotch egg
- shandy
- shepherds’ pie
- shortbread/ shortcake
- Shredded Wheat
- Shreddies
- Stilton (cheese)
- stuffing
- Terry’s Chocolate Orange
- toad in the hole
- Toblerone
- trifle
- Weetabix
- Yorkshire (pudding)
Match the descriptions below to the names above. A few are not defined.
- Eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, mushrooms, baked beans, grilled tomatoes and black pudding (sausage made from pig’s blood). Served with ketchup or brown sauce.
- Bright yellow in colour, it has a heat that goes up your nose in the same way as horseradish and Japanese wasabi.
- Similar in appearance to mayonnaise, but with a very vinegary flavour and no need to keep it in the fridge, so actually more similar to ketchup.
- Like American steak sauce and quite similar to Japanese tonkatsu sauce, this is most commonly used with the ingredients of an English breakfast, e.g. in a bacon sandwich.
- Plain, brown biscuits, although they are also available coated on one side in chocolate. Their name comes from them being high in fibre and so apparently good for you.
- Cold chopped vegetables (and cold chopped meat if used) are fried in a pan together with mashed potato until the mixture is well-cooked and brown on the sides. The name is a description of the action and sound made during the cooking process.
- Short for “sandwich”.
- Made with minced lamb and vegetables topped with mashed potato, so like cottage pie but with lamb (hence the name).
- Cheddar, Stilton etc on crackers, or sometimes digestives.
- A cup of tea, usually served with milk and maybe one or two sugars.
- Fried potatoes between two slices of bread, usually with butter and ketchup or brown sauce.
- Short for “fish and chip shop”.
- An alcoholic drink made from apples that is similar in colour and strength to beer.
- A kind of jam that is eaten with roast turkey, e.g. as part of Xmas dinner.
- A pot of tea, plus some fresh warm scones that you spread with homemade strawberry jam and top with thick clotted cream.
- Another way of saying dessert/ sweet/ pudding.
- Sausages and mashed potatoes. English sausages have this nickname because they often pop while being cooked.
- Short for “beverage”, this is a slang way of talking about an alcoholic drink.
- Softening and warming a biscuit (= cookie) in your drink before you eat it.
- Brown beer with lots of hops. Most pubs also have a stronger version called “best”.
- Thin slices of fried potato that are usually bought already flavoured in bags and eaten as a snack. The most common flavours in the UK are salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, beef, smoky bacon and prawn cocktail.
- A shop where you can buy alcohol, like an American liquor store, often called an “offie”. If has that name because you can’t drink on the premises.
- Cod, haddock or plaice deep fried in flour batter with chips, served with malt vinegar. This is England’s traditional take-away food.
- A potato cooked with its skin on, usually eaten with baked beans, cheese or chilli con carne.
Put the probability/ possibility phrases into order
Do the task below that your teacher tells you to, then use the other task to help.
Write a way of talking about each level of possibility/ probability below.
9. 100%! (fact!)
8. 100% (fact)
7. 100% (= there are no other options, it couldn’t be anything else, according to my logic)
6. 99%
5. 70-80%
4. 55-60%
3. 50%
2. 50% or under (depending on pronunciation)
1. well under 50%
0. 0% (according to my logic)
Check as a class.
What other words and expressions can you use to express certainty and doubt?
Put these phrases into order by how likely something is to be true, with the most likely at the top.
- almost certainly
- can’t
- could
- could possibly
- is
- is definitely
- might/ may
- might well/ may well
- must
- probably
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
0.
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