This is a partner-pair speaking activity for English beginners that provides fun, repeated practice of making comparisons, talking about statistics, geographic vocabulary, and relatively complex sentence patterns. It is ideal for learners who already have a solid foundation of basic speaking ability and are ready to learn more complex communication skills.
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 systematically crosses off possibilities on a Deduction Panel until only one option remains.
Full Prerequisites: Students can participate fully in this Deduction Challenge with all of the activity’s available materials after memorizing/learning:
Materials Available:
Deduction Challenges 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 Deduction Challenge 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 basic statistical and geographic information about countries in English:
“Is the average annual temperature in the country more than / less than _______________?”
“Is total land area in the country more than / less than _______________ square kilometers?”
“Is the population in the country more than / less than _______________?”
“Is the country part of _______________ (continent/region)?”
2. Gaining basic mastery in asking questions that could be answered yes/no about flags:
“Does the country’s flag have the colors _______________, _______________, and _______________?“
“Does the country’s flag have a star/leaf in the middle?”
“Does the country’s flag have 3 rectangles beside each other from left to right?”
“Does the country’s flag have 2 / 3 rectangles stacked from top to bottom.”
“Does the country’s flag have a 1 rectangle background?”
“Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, in the middle, that goes from left to right?”
“Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, a little to the left, that goes from top to bottom?”
“Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, in the middle, on top of a slightly thicker rectangle, that both go from left to right?”
“Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, a little to the left, on top of a slightly thicker rectangle, that both go from top to bottom?”
3. Learning to accurately read and pronounce the names of 66 countries.
“Is the country _______________?”
4. 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 which country on the Deduction Table Panel matches the country on Participant 1’s Secret Card, based only on Participant 1’s answers.
The 2 members of a partner-pair will be able to self-assess their own performance after Participant 2 asks “Is the country _______________?” while naming a country on their Deduction Panel.
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 Deduction Challenge with a new Secret Card.
Graduation:
Learners will have achieved the Learning Goals listed above when they can consistently complete the Deduction Challenge 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 Deduction Challenge activity, including correct use of the Core Vocabulary Words and Sentence Patterns.
3. Be sure to tell the students that the Participant 2 can only ask if the country is a specific country as their last questions after narrowing down the 66 possibilities to just one.
4. Allow the students to practice the Deduction Challenge repeatedly.
5. The instructor’s role is to monitor the students’ practice to ensure correct use of the activity’s Sentence Patterns.
6. 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.
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 Deduction Challenge activity.
For classes with only 1 student, the instructor will also need to be the student’s practice partner.
1: Country Clue Cards
Each of these cards feature a different combination of country clues. For this partner-pair activity, these cards serve as Secret Cards.
There are 4 different sets of 18 cards, which are labelled Set A, Set B, Set C, and Set D.
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 Deduction Challenge, Participant 1 holds onto a single Secret Card and does not show it to Participant 2 until Participant 2 has narrowed down the choices on their Country Information Deduction Tables to just one.
2: Country Information Tables (Deduction Tables)
The two Deduction Tables collectively feature all of the needed information about 66 countries on the Country Clues Secret Cards. If printed double-sided, all of the information will conveniently fit onto a single A4/US Letter page.
If laminated, the images on Deduction Panels can be systematically crossed off with an erasable whiteboard marker. After completing a round of the Deduction Challenge, participants can simple wipe the marker marks off of the laminated surface and immediately be ready to repeat the activity.
Each partner-pair participating in this activity will need their own set of 2 Deduction Tables, for use by Participant 2.
Page 2/2 of Set A of the Country Clue Cards
Page 1/2 of Set B of the Country Clue Cards
Info Table with Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean
Page 1/2 of Set C of the Country Clue Cards
Page 2/2 of Set D of the Country Clue Cards
Info Table with Europe, the Americas, and Oceania
The Sentences & Sentence Patterns Used in this activity include everything needed to successfully complete this Deduction Challenge. 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 verbally list the animals shown on their Secret Card, this Deduction Challenge 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 |
Is the average annual temperature in the country more than / less than _______________? |
Is total land area in the country more than / less than _______________ square kilometers? |
Is the population in the country more than / less than _______________? |
Is the country part of _______________ (continent/region)? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have the colors _______________, _______________, and _______________? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have a star/leaf in the middle? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have 3 rectangles beside each other from left to right? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have 2/3 rectangles stacked from top to bottom. Yes |
Does the country’s flag have a 1 rectangle background?” Yes |
Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, in the middle, that goes from left to right? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, a little to the left, that goes from top to bottom? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, in the middle, on top of a slightly thicker rectangle, that both go from left to right? Yes |
Does the country’s flag have a thin rectangle, a little to the left, on top of a slightly thicker rectangle, that both go from top to bottom? Yes |
Yes, it does. Yes |
No, it doesn’t. Yes |
Is the country _______________? Yes |
Yes, it is! Yes |
No, it isn’t. Yes |
The Core Vocabulary Words listed below are all words that students should learn/memorize BEFORE attempting the Deduction Challenge described on this page.
Core Vocabulary Words To Pre-Learn | |
Material Sets A, B, C, and D General Vocabulary | area, black, blue, bottom, burgundy, celcius, colors, country, degrees, flag, green, kilometers, land, leaf, left, middle, orange, population, rectangle, red, right, square, star, temperature, thin, top, white, yellow |
Material Sets A, B, C, and D Continents/Regions | Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, North America, Oceania, South America |
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 Vocabulary Words listed below are all words that students should be able to read and pronounce with adequate pronunciation BEFORE attempting the Deduction Challenge described on this page. Students will only need to learn to read/pronounce the country names listed for a specific set of materials to play to complete the Deduction Challenge with that set of materials.
Words to be Able to Read | |
Materials Set A (18 Cards) | Algeria, Angola, Belgium, Cuba, France, Haiti, Ireland, Kuwait, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Spain, The United Arab Emirates |
Materials Set B (18 Cards) | Austria, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Germany, Italy, Jamaica, Madagascar, Mali, The Netherlands, Senegal, South Korea, Turkey, The United Kingdom, The United States |
Materials Set C (18 Cards) | Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, The Dominican Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakstan, Morocco, Norway, Peru, Poland, Sri Lanka, Vietnam |
Materials Set D (18 Cards) | Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, North Korea, The Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Sri Lanka |
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 | 1, 2, 3, a, and, annual, average, background, beside, both, does, doesn’t, each, from, go/goes, have, in, is, isn’t, it, less, little, middle, more, no, of, on, other, part, slightly, stacked, than, that, the, thicker, to, total, yes |
Most of the words included on this list are hard (or virtually impossible) to depict visually on a flashcard. Demonstrating them while introducing this Deduction Challenge 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).
The average annual temperature is more than 22°C and less than 24°C.
The total land area of the country is more than 100,000 km².
The population of the country is more than 5 million people.
The country is part of Asia and the Middle East.
The country’s flag has the colors red, yellow, white, and black.
A flag with 3 rectangles stacked from top to bottom and a star in the middle.