This is a partner-pair speaking activity for English beginners that provides fun, repeated practice of basic body-part vocabulary. It is ideal for learners who are still learning to confidently form basic sentences.
The two partners in each partner-pair work together, taking turns being the Participant 1 and Participant 2. For each round, Participant 1 begins by drawing 1 card from the Secret Card Deck.
Then, Participant 2 asks questions (using the provided Core Vocabulary Words and Sentences / Sentence Patterns) and glues body-parts on a base image of a robot’s torso to replicate the robot shown on the Participant 1’s Secret Card.
Full Prerequisites: Students can participate fully in this Replication Exercise with all of the activity’s available materials after memorizing/learning:
Materials Available:
Replication Exercises are an excellent example of information-gap activities, which serve as communication practice exercises in both Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). These challenges provide language learners with repeated practice of important sentence patterns and topic-specific vocabulary.
Additionally, since successful completion of the Replication Exercise task described below relies on accurately communicating information, the activity offers students an excellent opportunity to self-assess their communication accuracy and initiate error-correction themselves.
This is far more efficient and effective than students only knowing that they are making an error if an instructor points it out. It also empowers learners to seek out solutions to mistakes themselves, rather than primarily being passive receivers of teaching and error-correction.
1. Gaining basic mastery in using the following sentence pattern and sentence to successfully collect information in English:
“Does your robot have (a) _______________ _______________ their body?”
“Does your robot have a head on top of their neck?”
“Is this your robot?”
2. Gaining basic mastery in using the following phrases to answer questions accurately:
“Yes, it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
On-Going Self-Assessment:
During each round of play, Participant 2 attempts to determine what the robot on Participant 1’s Secret Card looks like based only on Participant 1’s answers, and then replicate it by cutting and gluing body-parts into place on the robot’s torso.
The 2 members of a partner-pair will be able to self-assess their own performance after Participant 2 asks “Is this your robot?” while pointing at the completed robot on their Cut & Glue Replication sheet.
Participant 1 can then show the Secret Card and the 2 partners can check if their verbal communication was successful. If they failed to successful communicate, they can figure out which mistake they made and then reattempt the Replication Exercise with a new Secret Card.
Graduation:
Learners will have achieved the Learning Goals listed above when they can consistently complete the Replication Exercise correctly with any randomly selected Secret Card, while using the target Sentences / Sentence Patterns and Core Vocabulary Words confidently and without hesitation.
1. Introduce the Core Vocabulary Words and encourage the students to learn them.
2. Demonstrate the Replication Exercise activity, including correct use of the Core Vocabulary Words and Sentence Patterns.
3. Allow the students to practice the Replication Exercise repeatedly.
4. The instructor’s role is to monitor the students’ practice to ensure correct use of the activity’s Sentence Patterns.
5. When students fully achieve the activity’s Learning Goals, the instructor can then graduate the student(s) to a new learning opportunity/activity that further builds on the newly achieved learning. The more complex Monster Body-Parts Deduction Challenge is a good choice as a follow-up that builds on this activity’s learning with additional body-part vocabulary words.
Notes:
If Cheat Sheets are not utilized, students should be required to demonstrate sufficient memorization of the Core Vocabulary Words before they are approved to participate in the Replication Exercise activity.
For classes with only 1 student, the instructor will also need to be the student’s practice partner.
1: Robot Body-Part Cards
Each of these cards feature a different arrangement of body-parts on a robot character. For this partner-pair activity, these cards serve as Secret Cards.
There are 2 choices of cards available, one regular and one with left/right indicators to help students remember which side is left and which is right. Each set, which are otherwise identical, includes 18 cards, which are labelled Set A.
Each partner-pair participating in this activity will need 1 Secret Card at time, to be held by Participant 1.
One set of these cards is suitable for a group of up to 36 activity participants. If there are more than 36 participants (18 partner-pairs), then additional cards will need to be added to the secret card deck.
•
For each round of this Replication Exercise, Participant 1 holds onto a single Secret Card and does not show it to Participant 2 until Participant 2 has completed a robot character on their Replication Sheet.
2: Replication Sheets
There are two Replication Sheets available on a single one-page printable. Each page will need to be cut in half before use. The Replication Sheets feature a robot torso in the middle, with all require body-parts along the bottom, ready to be cut-out as needed and glued into place.
For each round of the activity, each partner-pair participating in this activity will need 1 copy of the Replication Sheet, for use by Participant 2.
Page 1/2 of Set A of the Robot Body-Part Cards
Page 2/2 of the Cards with Left/Right Indicators
2-in-1 Robot Replication Sheets Printable
The Sentences & Sentence Patterns Used in this activity include everything needed to successfully complete this Replication Exercise. While sentences can indeed be composed that would allow for the activity to be completed more efficiently, the provided sentences & sentence patterns below are specifically chosen to maximize learners’ use of the activity’s Core Vocabulary Words.
If the answerer was permitted to simply describe the robot shown on their Secret Card, this Replication Exercise could be completed with a single question and answer. However, by limiting Participant 1’s responses to yes/no answers, Participant 2 must compose more questions than would otherwise be necessary.
Standard Sentences & Sentence Patterns |
Does your robot have (a) _______________ (body-part) _______________ (position) their body? |
Does your robot have a head on top of their neck? |
Yes, it does. / No, it doesn’t. |
Is this your robot? |
Yes, it is! / No, it isn’t. |
The Core Vocabulary Words listed below are all words that students should learn BEFORE attempting the Replication Exercise described on this page.
Core Vocabulary Words To Pre-Learn | ||
Materials Set A (18 Cards) | General | body, robot |
Body-Parts | arm, head, legs, neck, wheel | |
Preposition Phrases | in the middle of, on the bottom of, on the left side of, on the right side of, on top of | |
Notes:
*There is also the option to provide learners with a Cheat Sheet listing all of the Core Vocabulary Words next to their images. This will allow them practice using all of the vocabulary words without needing to first memorize them. The process of learning the words can be scaffolded by first allowing students to use the Cheat Sheet, and then (once they have some familiarity) encouraging them to flip the Cheat Sheet face-down and only use it after first attempting to recall a needed vocabulary word from memory.
The following words will be used to the play this game (with every available set of cards). However, these words don’t need to be pre-taught. These words can and should be learned WHILE playing the game. The instructor’s demonstration of how to play the game will provide an opportunity to show how all of these words are used as part of useful communication sentences.
Vocabulary Best Learned in Context | |
Used With All Material Sets | a/an, does, doesn’t, have, is, isn’t, it, no, their, this, yes, your |
Most of the words included on this list are hard (or virtually impossible) to depict visually on a flashcard. Demonstrating them while introducing this Replication Exercise and then having learners use them while participating in the activity is an optimal strategy for helping learners understand the words’ meaning (based on context/function).
1. Singular / Plural Article Use
For this activity, the legs are intentionally designed as a single unit. Students should be taught to say ‘legs’ as a plural word and not preceed it with an article, but to use ‘a/an’ as an article for all other body-parts.
“Does the robot have a legs on top of the robot’s body?”
“Does the robot have legs on top of the robot’s body?”
A robot with a wheel on the right, legs on the bottom, an arm on the left, and a head on top of the robot’s body.
A robot with a wheel on the bottom, a head in the middle, arms on the left & right, and a neck on top of the robot’s body.
A card with left/right indicators provided for learners who are struggling to differentiate.