Making Definitions / Definable Words Explanation

Making Definitions / Definable Words

• Details

Name of Item	Making Definitions / Definable Words game
Activity Type	Grammar presentation / practice / game
Student Level	Lower Intermediate - Intermediate
Time Allowance	15 - 30 minutes
Preparation Required	Copying / Cutting up cards - one set takes 10 minutes
Other Items Needed	scissors / copier-friendly card
Vocabulary	nothing special
Grammar	Defining relative clauses and other clauses used in making definitions

• Instructions

The "making definitions" work-sheet is fairly self-explanatory. At first glance the "grammar words" used in the upper table might seem confusing to some students so it's probably best to start by looking at the four specimen sentences and go from there to identifying the different parts of the sentences.

Once this has been made clear and the students can happily point to the different parts of the sentences, you can move on to having them identify what the things are that are being defined in each. The definitions themselves are not very clear and there are a number of possibilities, epecially for "a" which could be pancakes, cake, omelette, scrambled egg or even ice-cream. You should point out here that adding further clauses to a definition makes the meaning more specific to one thing.

Next, students should work (together in pairs) to produce definitions for the four items at the bottom of the page. In each case, several clauses will be necessary to make the mening clear.

Finally, give each class member one or two cards, which they should not show to the others. Tell them to write definitions for the words on their cards and be prepared to read those definitions. As students finish writing, gather them into groups of four or five to read their definitions aloud and have other group members try to guess what the words on their cards are.