Miming people
Description: / In this activity, students mime descriptions of people and the other students in the group have to produce the description orally.Objectives: / 1. / To recycle / give controlled practice in structures and vocabulary used to describe what people look like.
2. / To warm up the students and to establish a positive classroom atmosphere.
Activities: / Mime game - Group work
Level: / S1 - S3
Materials: / Mime cards
Blank cards
Miming people: Steps
Mime game - Group work1. / Explain what the word mime means and demonstrate how to play the game by miming some descriptions yourself and asking the class to give the description orally.
2. / Tell the class that you are going to put them into groups of four and give them an envelope with some Mime cards inside. Explain that a sentence will be written on each one and the students should take it in turns to close their eyes, pick out a card and mime what is written on the card to the rest of their group. The person who guesses correctly "wins" the card and if nobody guesses what is being mimed, the "mimer" gets to keep it. The person with the most cards at the end is the winner.
3. / When using mime to practise a particular language structure/function or vocabulary, it is important to try to provide students with a context . One way of doing this is to introduce a question to which all of the mimes are an answer and to encourage students to build up a short dialogue. This avoids presenting the students with language in a vacuum, and helps to provide more meaningful language practice:
Students A, B and C: / What does he look like? (Student D mimes what is written on the card.)
Student A: / He's got short hair? (Student D shakes her head.)
Student B: / Has he got short, curly hair? (Student D shakes her head.)
Student C: / He's hot short, wavy hair. (Student D nods.)
4. / Divide the class into groups of four and give an envelope containing the mime cards to each group.
5. / Monitor as the groups play the game. When students have gone through all the cards, you could get them to do their own mimes to provide less controlled practice in the target language and to brainstorm other vocabulary used to describe people.
6. / To round off the activity, you could ask individuals who did especially good or amusing mimes to do them in front of the class.
Pop-up screen notes
Miming people
Glossary: / Mime refers to when we use movements and gestures to communicate without actually speaking. It is a versatile classroom activity with regards to:
/ the kinds of language it can be used to practise;
/ how it can be adapted to the needs of Form 1 to Form 7 students across the school banding system; and
/ the different ways in which it can fit into a sequence of activities.
Glossary: / The aim of the controlled-practice stage is to give students practice in accurately manipulating the form of the target language, ie its grammar and pronunciation. Errors made in the target language therefore need to be corrected at this stage.
Accuracy-based activities play an important role in the development of fluency but their overuse could hinder this development, as they do not involve real use of language.
Example: / Grammar
/ He is + adjective: / He's well-built.
/ He has got + adjective + noun: / He's got wavy hair.
/ He wears (+ adjective) + noun: / He wears round glasses.
Vocabulary
/ Adjectives: / tall, medium height, short,
curly, straight, wavy, permed
/ Nouns: / eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair,
moustache, beard
Obviously the activity can be made more or less difficult to suit the ability level of your class.
Note: / You need to prepare the cards beforehand or ask students to prepare them in the lesson. They can use a ruler to tear along the lines. Each group will need one set of the cards.
Steps
1. Example: / / She's got long, curly hair.
/ He's tall and slim.
/ He's got a moustache.
1. Note: / This is especially important if you have not played the game with this particular class before. Some students may be a bit reluctant at first, but if you do a very expressive mime and show that the activity can actually be a lot of fun, then this will probably encourage students to get involved.
2. Note: / It is up to you to decide how close the guesses have to be to what is written on the paper. If your focus is on accuracy, you could tell students that they have to produce grammatically correct sentences in order to "win" a card.
3. Glossary: / Context is the situation surrounding language which contributes to its meaning. For example, the present simple tense is often used to express habitual actions or states-of-being in present time; therefore the context for its use is in talking about present routines or habits. When we present new language to students it is helpful to create a context of meaning in the classroom for that language. This context can be created in many ways:
/ through pictures
/ through real objects (realia)
/ by creating scenes through words spoken by the teacher
/ through an audio-taped conversation
/ through a short reading text
Once we create the context for the presentation stage, we can use the same context for activities in the practice and production stages.
Explanation: / These cards have been included so that you can print them out and make your own cards to practise any language structures/functions or vocabulary within your scheme of work.
Adaptations
Mime can be used as:
/ a way of giving controlled practice and consolidating language which has just been taught;
/ a pre-listening or reading activity which prepares students for a text in terms of arousing their interest and pulling out related vocabulary; and
/ a way of eliciting vocabulary items which students may need in a lesson focusing on language structures or functions.
In a lesson on ways of describing people, the students need to have the necessary vocabulary in order to practise the language function. In this situation, an activity which recycles different parts of the body and adjectives to describe appearance would serve as a good way of setting the topic of the lesson or as a way of giving controlled oral practice in the target language.
Miming peopleMime cards
Miming people
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