A Friday Communicative Activity

Marisol listens to Víctor & Miguel describe the video.

It's Friday and definitely time for another one of the students' and my favorite activities - describing videos.

I found this ad for a sport utility several months ago, called.  Below are the steps for the activity, with the goal of having the students communicate in L2.

1.  Before class, I watched the movie and made a list of the events from the story that students would later need to match.

2.  Students form groups of 4.

3.  One person from each group leaves the classroom.  (My room is down a short hallway so it doesn't cause any problems with the students in the hall.)

4.  I show the video to the students 2 times.  

5. The students return from the hall and sit with their group.  The students that saw the movie must  describe the events in the video to their member that was in the hall in SPANISH ONLY. The students that were in the hall are allowed to talk in English and ask questions in English, but those that watched the movie must speak only in Spanish. (I allow the students that were in the hall to speak English to take some of the pressure off of them.)

6.  After the groups have described the video in Spanish, I send the students back to the hall with a sheet of paper and they write the events in the video either in Spanish (L2) or English (L1).

7.  I collected their papers and groups earned 1 point for each fact they have that matched mine.  The winning group received one extra credit point.

My list of events that students need to match to earn points:

- man and woman in bed

- it's morning

- she takes shower

- there is a hair dryer on the shower floor

- she gets an electric shock

- man looks out the window at vehicle

- window falls on man's neck/head

- man and woman see/pass each other in the hall

- bowling ball falls on woman's head

- torch burns man's hair

- man puts his head in a fishbowl

- man trips over wire at top of steps and falls down stairs

- woman flosses her teeth

- woman steps over man at bottom of steps

- man and woman fight/push each other outside of house

- man has keys

- woman goes into house

- woman smells gas in kitchen

- a pan is in the microwave

- man drives the vehicle

- house explodes

- woman is on top of vehicle
.

The next time I do this activity, I'll follow it with an activity that includes the words the students didn't know when they were explaining the activity.  

I hope your students enjoy it as much as my students did.  Let me know if you have other ideas how to use this to encourage even more communication in the target language.