This is a partner-pair speaking activity for English beginners that provides fun, repeated practice of a flight reservation vocabulary, including ticket and seat types. It is ideal for learners who have some basic confidence in forming basic sentences and could benefit from expanding their communication range with some more complex sentence patterns and practice of niche vocabulary words.
However, it is also very suitable for learners planning on traveling internationally, as the activity’s Core Vocabulary Words are essential to routine communication while preparing to board airline flights.
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 a variety of sentence patterns to successfully collect information about someone’s flight reservation, including seat/ticket type, price, and departure/destination countries.
“Where are you departing from?“
“Where are you traveling to?“
“What type of ticket do you have?“
“What type of seat do you have?“
“Did your ticket cost $____.”
2. Demonstrating basic mastery in using the following phrases to answer questions accurately:
“I am departing from _________________.”
“I am going to _________________.”
“I have a window/middle/aisle seat.”
“I have an economy/business/first class ticket.”
“Yes, it did.” (For answering price questions.)
“No, it didn’t.” (For answering price questions.)
3. Being able to say 3 to 4 digit numbers correctly.
“Did your ticket cost thousand, five hundred, forty-five dollars?“
“Did your ticket cost thousand, five hundred, forty, and five dollars?“
“Did your ticket cost one-thousand, five hundred, and forty-five dollars?“
On-Going Self-Assessment:
During each round of play, Participant 2 attempts to determine which entry/price on a Deduction Table matches the information 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 “Did your ticket cost $____?” with a (hopefully correct) price in the blank. If the price spoken is correct, the 2 partners will know that their communication was accurate and correct.
Participant 1 can then show the Secret Card and the 2 partners can double-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. Allow the students to practice the Deduction Challenge 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.
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: Flight Reservation Cards
Each of these cards feature a different combination of different animals. For this partner-pair activity, these cards serve as Secret Cards.
There are 2 different sets of 36 cards, which are labelled Set A and Set B.
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 Deduction Table to just one.
2: Flight Reservations Deduction Tables
Deduction Tables feature all of the flight reservations from all of the cards in a set on a single “table.” If laminated, the “reservations” on the Deduction Tables 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.
The following Deduction Tables are available:
Each partner-pair participating in this activity will need their own Deduction Table (or pair of Deduction Tables, if Card Sets A and B are combined in a single Super Deck) for use by Participant 2.
Page 2/4 of Set A of the Flight Reservation Cards
Page 3/4 of Set A of the Flight Reservation Cards
Flight Reservations Deduction Panel B
The Sentences & Sentence Patterns Used in this activity include everything needed to successfully complete this Deduction Challenge.
Sentences & Sentence Patterns |
Where are you departing from? |
I am departing from _________________. |
Where are you traveling to? |
I am going to _________________. Yes |
What type of ticket do you have? |
I have a window/middle/aisle seat. |
What type of seat do you have? |
I have an economy/business/first class ticket. |
Did your ticket cost $____. |
Yes, it did. |
No, it didn’t. |
The Vocabulary Words listed below are all words that students should learn BEFORE attempting the Deduction Challenge described on this page.
Students will need to learn the words listed for each Materials Set BEFORE attempting the Deduction Challenge with that Materials Set.*
Core Vocabulary Words To Pre-Learn | |
Materials Sets A + B | aisle, business class, dollars, economy class, first class, middle, seat, ticket, window |
Materials Set A Countries | Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United States |
Materials Set B Countries | Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, the Philippines, Turkey, the United Kingdom |
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.
**Additional numbers could be used for this activity, but aren’t required knowledge for learners to be able to participate fully.
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 | |
For Materials Sets A + B | a/an, am, an, are, cost, departing, did, didn’t, do, from, going, have, I, it, no, of, to, traveling, type, what, where, yes, you, 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 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).
