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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 3; May 02
1.The Auction Test Secondary
Camino Gefaell, Galicia, Spain
This is a kind of test to be used whenever the teacher feels like revising some points or when the students are so stressed that we want to encourage them a bit by introducing some fun into the examination system. It 's for groups of up to 16 students of any age but if there are more than that, they can be divided in pairs but I wouldn't recommend threesomes. I also recommend arranging the students in a U-shape facing the teacher. The teacher has to prepare three times as many sentences as pupils in the class. Some of these must be right and others must contain a mistake each ( if there is more than one it can be very confusing) .These could be: the use of articles, easily confused verbs, quantifiers, auxiliary verbs, revision of verb tenses , modal verbs ... Almost any grammar point.
In class:
- First I ask them to bring in, say, 12 sweets or jelly bears or something like that the following class (so I build up expectation). I, myself, also buy lots and lots of sweets ( you will find that even grown-ups love the idea )
- The next lesson I ask them to write Right/wrong on a sheet of paper and I tell them that I'm going to write a sentence on the blackboard and they must decide whether it's right or wrong but they can't say a word.
- Once they've read the sentence they put their sweet on Right/wrong (I do this because otherwise all of them would start yelling out their answers).
- When all of them have done so I look at their answers and collect the sweets which are on the wrong side. They get furious but this is part of the game. Now, if the correct answer was "WRONG" , I ask those students which had put their sweet on that side of the paper whether they want to "double their bet" If they say Yes I allow those ones time to give me the right "version" of the sentence but I don't say a word until I've heard all of them .Then I give the students with the correct answer twice as many sweets as they had on their paper (I set a maximum of three per sentence) and if they aren't I take their previous sweets away (so that they don't get their answer by pure chance).
The best thing about this test is that everybody goes home feeling happy even if they have lost some sweets. But you will be surprised to see shy students winning many sweets and brilliant ones losing them galore! After many years of doing this test , I have , of course , derived "versions" of it to cater for different situations, and I encourage all of you to do so. If anyone would like to get more information on this test contact me at caminogefaell@mixmail.com