Describing games
Objectives
 To have fun
 To develop auditory visual skills
 To identify any students with obvious problems
Equipment required
 Nothing special in terms of objects
 A dictionary for each student or pair of students for task 2.
Task 1
1. Ask all the students to find an “object” and, without showing anyone
else, hide that object from view.
2. Select a student to describe their object to the rest of the group, without
naming the object. The rest of the group have to work out/guess what
the object is.
3. Once the item is guessed, then another student has a go at describing
their object and so on.
4. Once the game is over and everyone has had a turn, discuss what makes
a description most easy to “visualise”.
5. Play the game again trying to build up oral describing skills.
Task 2
1. Using dictionaries ask students to look up definitions of familiar words.
2. Select students in turn to read out a definition without mentioning the
word. After each definition the other students try to guess the word.
3. Discuss what makes a definition easy/difficult to visualise.
4. Read to the class the definition for “it” and see if they can guess the
word.
5. Play the game again with the students finding the definitions.
6. Discuss strategies for helping to identify the word being defined.