This is a partner-pair speaking activity for English language learners that provides relatively complex speaking practice. It is ideal for learners who already have a good foundation of basic speaking skills.
This is a good semi-structured activity for helping learners begin to transition from only being able to perform basic communication, to being able to engage in more advanced communication that requires using creativity to figure out how to communicate a wide range of information and unique situations.
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, both partners co-operate together with open communication (with, but not limited to using the provided Core Vocabulary Words and Sentences / Sentence Patterns) and Participant 1 attempts to draw an accurate reproduction of the monster shown on 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 confident mastery in using a variety of vocabulary words to describe the appearance of a creature.
2. Gaining confident mastery in understanding verbal communication that may be unique to one situation, even if the phrases used were not specifically pre-taught.
On-Going Self-Assessment:
During each round of play, Participant 2 attempts to determine what the monster on Participant 1’s Secret Card looks like based only on Participant 1’s communication, and then replicate it by drawing and coloring.
The 2 members of a partner-pair will be able to self-assess their own performance after Participant 2 completes their drawing and the two partners compare the drawing with the monster on the Secret Card.
Most learners will recognize gaps in their own English skills/knowledge and seek to fill those gaps so that they can perform better on the task.
Graduation:
To ensure that students can consistently complete the Replication Exercise correctly with any randomly selected Secret Card while communicating confidently and without hesitation, an instructor should set the expectation that all students will need to successfully perform the task one-on-one with an instructor before they will be graduated from this activity.
1. Introduce (or review) the Core Vocabulary Words and check the students’ knowledge of them.
2. DO NOT Demonstrate the Replication Exercise activity. Instead, simply explain it, but do not demonstrate how English could be used to complete the task. Leave it to the students’ to make their own efforts to figure out how to utilize their existing language skills to complete the task.
3. Allow the students to practice the Replication Exercise repeatedly.
4. The instructor’s role is to monitor the students’ practice. The instructor can provide feedback if a specific language error is made repeated, but generally it is best to allow students to use incorrect grammar, as long as the communication between partner-pairs is understandable to both. Grammar issues can be covertly noted by an instructor and later addressed in lessons specifically designed to practice correctly applying each relevant grammar rule.
5. If students get stuck and are unable to figure out how to describe specific aspects of the monster characters, an instructor may eventually provide suggestions for how those specific aspects of monster descriptions can be verbally communicated. However, it is best if students are able to discover their own solutions, so ideally instuctors will only coach students in the right direction, while still leaving room for the students to have moments of insight. This approach will maximizing their learning and their retention of that learning.
5. When students fully achieve the activity’s Learning Goals by confidently and effectively demonstrating their ability to complete the task one-on-one with the instructor, they can then be graduated to a new learning opportunity/activity that further builds on the newly achieved learning.
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: Monster Body-Part Cards
Each of these cards features a different arrangement of body-parts on a monster character. For this partner-pair activity, these cards serve as Secret Cards.
There are 3 sets available, each with 18 cards, which are labelled Set A, Set B, and Set C.
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.
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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 finished drawing a monster 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 an egg-shaped monster body in the middle.
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 Monster Body-Part Cards
Page 2/2 of Set B of the Monster Body-Part Cards
2-in-1 Monster Replication Drawing Printable
There are no suggested Sentences & Sentence Patterns for this activity. Instead, learners should be permitted to rely on their knowledge and skills from past learning to figure out how to communicate productively with their activity partner.
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 | ||
All Materials Sets* | above, below, beside, big, bigger, left (direction), like (comparative to), little, middle, on, small smaller, right (direction), top | |
Materials Set A (18 Cards) | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10**, arm, blue, body, brown, color, ear, eye, foot/feet, gray, green, hand, head, knee, monster, mouth, neck, nose, orange, pink, purple, red, shoe, tail, thumb, yellow | |
Materials Set B (18 Cards) | finger, fingernail, hair, hoof, horn, shoulder, toe, tooth/teeth, wing | + all Set A vocabulary |
Materials Set C (18 Cards) | bone, brain, elbow, flower, heart | + all Set A and Set B vocabulary |
Notes:
*There are many creative ways to effectively communication instructions for how to replicated the monsters on the Secret Cards. Learners may choose to use many words not on this basic list and that should be encouraged.
**Additional numbers could be used for this activity, but aren’t required knowledge for learners to be able to participate fully.
There are no suggested list of words to learn in context for this activity, as it is designed to be a less structured communication task where learners rely on previous learning in unique and creative ways.
1. Singular / Plural Article Use & Pluralization with ‘s’
Instructors may choose to use this activity as an opportunity to be vigilant about encouraging correct use of singular articles and pluralizing plural nouns with ‘s.’
A Body-Parts Monster card from Set A.
A Body-Parts Monster card from Set B.
A Body-Parts Monster card from Set C.