The Newlywed Game

This is actually more of a 'how well do you know your classmates?' game, but it is modeled after the old 70's game show, "The Newlywed Game." You can call it something else, but regardless of what you call it, here's what you'll do:

1. Have two students in your class pick a partner - someone they think they know pretty well, perhaps the student they've sat beside all semester. In each pair, one partner will be 'Student A' and the other will be 'Student B.'

2. Give the partners a couple of minutes to chat (in the target language, of course) - asking anything about their partner that they think they may need to know - if they have siblings, what their favorite color is, etc. While the pairs are talking, the other students - those in the "audience"- should be quietly writing questions that will be used to interview the students.

3. Send one partner from each group (the student A's) out of the room and then interview the other other partners with your student "audience." You can ask them serious questions or silly ones, and you can choose some of the questions that the student audience has written.

4. Have the other partners from each pair come back into the classroom. Ask them the questions about their partners, like "What is Maria's favorite color?" "Does she have pets?" "Does Maria like intelligent and creative men, or good-looking and rich ones?" For every answer that a student gets correct about his partner, he wins a point.

5. Send the other partner (the student B's) out of the room, and interview the student A's.

6. Call the student B's back in, and see how many questions they can correctly answer about their partners. The couple with the most correct answers wins.

I've actually never tried the above activity in class, but both our French and German professors claim that it is a lot of fun and a great way to get the students enjoying an opportunity to use the target language. It seems like a great activity to do with those 1002 or 2000-level classes that have been together as a group for a semester or two. If you do try this activity in class, let me know how it goes!