Country Search: Explanation

Country Search

• Details

Name of Item	Country Search
Activity Type	Discussion / Questionaire
Student Level	Elementary - lower Intermediate
Time Allowance	10 - 15 minutes
Preparation Required	Cutting sheets in half (2 minutes). Persuading students to stand up and walk around talking,(half a lifetime?).
Other Items Needed	Scissors / a willing class
Vocabulary	nothing special
Grammar	Reinforcing question sentence patterns

• Instructions

This kind of activity is called "milling" in some books and "find someone who" in others and unless every question on this sheet is ideal for the assembled members of your class, you really should be using your personal knowledge of the group and writing something new - tailor-made for them. By "ideal" I mean that for most questions there should be only a few class members who will answer yes and that positive answers should be distributed throughout the group.

The activity proceeds as follows. The worksheet is cut in half and one piece is given to each class member. Explain that they will try to find one class member to match each sentence and if necessary you can demonstrate using the first question. Lower level groups may like to write out the questions they are going to use in the lower half of each segment.

To encourage further conversation you can tell the students that they MUST ask one further question. To facilitate this, I often write a long list of useful Wh-question words on the whiteboard / blackboard where everone can see.

Once everything is clear, you can tell everybody to stand up and start "milling".