Activity 31: Design a Club

Duration: 2030 min

Aim: Oral fluency practice
Summary: Students work in groups to design a club, guided by an example sheet.
Oral English Activites
Introduction
The aim of this activity is discussion, but rather than simply giving the vague directive
"design a club", an example with six sub-headings is provided as a guide. Also, the
groups have a clear goal: to devise their own idea for a club and write down the details
using the same format as the example.
Preparation
Write an example of a club, or use my "Chocolate Lovers Society" example:
club_example.doc (html preview). The example should be as brief as possible, to
encourage the students to also be brief, and should have the following sub-headings:
Name, Target demographic (tong3ji4 dui4xiang4 in Chinese), Member requirements,
Procedure for new members, and Calendar.
Make enough copies so that each group of 3 to 4 students can receive one. If you ask the
students not to write on the sheets, then they can be collected after the activity and
reused.
Procedure
Write the word "club" on the blackboard and ask what it means. Ask if anybody in the
class belongs to a club.
Say that the students will work in groups and design their own club. Brainstorm some
ideas for clubs (e.g. films, guitar, painting, photography, mahjong, etc). Then describe the
example that you have prepared. Write down each of the six sub-headings on the board as
you go. (Do this before you hand out the sheets).
Explain that each group needs to write down the details of their club, but it does not need
to be too neat, or too long. Tell them that you will collect it at the end of the lesson (it is
unreasonable to ask your students to write down so much and then not even look at it).
Now hand out the example sheets (and blank paper to write on, if the students do not
have any), and let the students begin. If any groups finish early, you can ask them to
elaborate on something, for example if there is a test for new members of their club then
ask them to design the test, or ask them to plan one of the activities mentioned on the
calendar in more detail.
At the end of the activity, it would take too long for each group to describe their club in
full to the class, so instead you can ask specific questions: for example, ask one group the
name and purpose of their club, ask the next group the name and target demographic of
their club, and so on.
Notes
I used this activity during a lesson on the topic of "college", because the textbook brought
up college clubs. It might also be suitable for a lesson on the topic of "recreation".
Rating:
The students seemed to enjoy the activity, but in terms of teaching outcomes it has some
problems. Firstly, I found that many groups lapsed into Chinese. Secondly, it requires too
much writing, which detracts from the main aim of the activity, namely speaking.
Comments
1.
2.
3. Name : Chocolate Lovers Society
4. Purpose
To help our members...
meet new friends with similar interests
learn more about chocolate
eat lots of chocolate!
We also want to start making our own chocolate.
5. Target demographic
Students from all departments, especially the civil engineering department (because they are too
healthy and run too fast). oth girls and boys are welcome, but we e!pect that "#$ of our
members will be female.
%. em!er re"uireme#ts : &one.
$. Procedure %or #e& mem!ers
applicants will be tested on their knowledge of chocolate
there is no limit on the number of new members
membership fee'

() (will be used for buying chocolate)

'. Cale#dar (Novem!er) *ecem!er+
&ovember ( *Show and Tell+ (bring your favourite type of chocolate and introduce it to others)
&ovember ,) -isit a chocolate factory
&ovember (" .hocolate /lympics (who can eat the fastest, eat the most, etc)
0ecember ,# 0ance party (lose weight)
0ecember ()
Collecting autographs (

)
Bird watching
Fishing
Knitting
Golf
Playing drums
Collecting rocks
Writing poems
hint: a thing hint: an animal
a lake a rabbit ( )
hint: a thing hint: a man doing something
a house a man chopping down a tree
hint: something pretty hint: an animal doing something
the sunset a bird making a nest ( )
hint: children doing something hint: a man doing something
children making a snowman (
)
a man riding a horse
hint: things hint: a thing
footprints () in the snow a boat () on the lake
hint: a man doing something hint: a thing
a man fishing a road
Activity 6: Storytelling by Turns
Duration: 515 min
Aim: Oral fluency practice
Summary: Working in groups, students invent a story, taking turns to speak.
Go back to Oral English Activites
Introduction
Inventing a story is a personalised, communicative activity, and often humourous. But
unless your students are especially imaginative, it needs some sort of goal or stimulous to
keep the story rolling. What I used was simply a list of words written on the board: each
student in turn must take the next word in the list and incorporate it into the story.
Preparation
Just prepare a list of words. For an intermediate class, at least 20 or 30 words are
required, since the groups will move through the list quite quickly. Of course the words
should be ones that they will know. For variety, try using a few different word classes:
some nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. You want the students to use their imagination, so
don't prepare a list of words which actually suggests a particular storyline!
Procedure
1. Write the words on the board. To save time, or to avoid scaring the students
with a blackboard full of words (!), you may choose to just write the first dozen
and then add more words while the activity is in progress.
2. Begin with an example (this will pique the students' curiosity). Begin telling
a story, incorporating the first word in the list, then the second, and so on. Point
to each word as you use it. You don't have to use a new word from the list in
every sentence, every second or third sentence is enough. Try to make your
story humourous, so the students get the idea that the activity is supposed to be
fun.
3. After a few words, choose a student and ask them to continue the story by
using the next word on the blackboard. Make this clear by marking or pointing
to the word on the blackboard. Repeat with another one or two students.
4. Explain that students will do this activity in groups, with each person using
the next word in the list to continue the story. Explain that each person can
speak one, two, three, or more sentences, but should only use one word from the
blackboard. Also explain that for verbs, students can change the form (eg. for
"run" they could say "runs", "running", "ran", etc). Check:
o
During your turn, how many words from the blackboard do you use? (one)
o
To add that one word to the story, can you say more than one sentence?
(yes)
o
Is just one sentence okay too? (yes)
o
Should you continue the story from the previous person? (yes)
o
For a verb, can you change the form? (yes)
5. Erase the already-used words from the board, and tell them to start a new
story using the next word. The students form groups and do the activity.
Variations
You could use an object or a picture as a starting-point for the story.
Another possible twist is to just make a list of 20 words or so, and then when the class is
near the end pick a few groups and ask each person to add a word to the list. I found that
students seemed to enjoy doing this.
Comments
I tried a variation of this activity in order to practise past simple and past progressive: all
the items on the list were verbs in one of these tenses: "ate, remembered, was/were
reading, etc". Although this is a bit of an odd way to form sentences (we usually choose
the grammar to match the context, rather than choosing a context to match the grammar!),
I hoped that it would at least raise awareness of the distinction between the two tenses.
But in fact the activity just seemed to generate more grammatical errors than ever before,
and it's not something that I would recommend trying.