An identity-guessing game for students in their first year of learning German.
Macro skills involved: Speaking/Listening, Reading.
In this activity students practise reading, and practise asking questions which require a Yes/No answer.
Each student needs access to a copy of the information sheet, on which are personal
details for 10 different characters. I have provided this sheet as a downloadable PDF file in two versions:
Two students (sie sollten nichts im Voraus vereinbaren!) take part at a time. (If the students are working from a sheet rather than from the computer screen, they could stand in front of the rest of the class.) One of the two students has chosen secretly one of the 10 characters on the page and takes on the identity of this character. She/He can discreetly let the teacher know which character he/she's chosen. This student answers simply Ja/Nein to the questions asked by the other student (who has to guess the identity of the other student). The student might ask questions such as:
If the student asking the questions remembers the answers carefully, she/he can eventually guess the identity. Only the last question should be of the form: Heißt du Karl? etc.
Naturally the other students in the class should follow the questioning, with the information in front of them, and try to guess the identity themselves. As successive pairs of students take their turn, you can also run it as a competition, with the aim being to be the student who guesses the respective identity in the least number of questions.
The information can also be the basis of a writing exercise. The students write out the details of each character in complete sentences, either in the first or third person, according to the level of the students' development (a 'reorganising information' activity).
Compiled by David Nutting