Aim of the Game
The aim of the game is to get learners to carry out a class survey, asking questions using the present perfect, to decide whether or not the given sentences are true for their class.
Procedure
Explain to the learners they are going to carry out a class survey to find out if some statements about the class are true or not.
Give out the handout and ask the learners to look at the eight sentences with a partner. Do they think they are true for this class?
Check the learners understand the meaning of the quantifiers by asking how many learners does each mean (e.g. in a class of 12, nobody = 0, almost everybody = 10-11 etc.).
Elicit from the learners what question they will have to ask each other to find out whether a sentence is true for that person (e.g. Have you been to Wales? Have you eaten frog’s legs?). In pairs, ask them to complete the eight questions they will need to ask in the spaces provided.
Tell them to record the number of yes and no answers they receive in the boxes provided. They can write the initials of the other learners in the boxes so they have a record of which learners they have asked which questions. Encourage them to ask follow up questions to find out more information where necessary.
Give the learners sufficient time to mingle and ask each other the questions.
Once learners have asked most people most questions, put them in pairs and ask them to decide whether the statements are true or false based on the data they have recorded.
Feedback on the activity, asking learners whether they think the statements are true or false and asking them to back up their assertions with the data they have.
Finish off the activity by asking learners what were the most interesting things they found out about each other; were they surprised by responses to any of the statements and finally focus on any language errors you heard during the activity.
Variations
To ensure a dynamic activity, you can insist learners cannot ask two questions to the same partner in a row. I.e. they have to change partners after every activity.
Alternatively, to ensure the activity is controlled, put the learners in two circles, one inside the other, so each learner is facing their partner. Give them a couple of minutes to ask each other questions, before asking the outer circle to move around one person so everyone has a new partner to talk to. Once everyone has talked to everyone else in the other circle, pair off learners from different circles to add their data together to reach their final conclusions.
To make the activity much shorter, cut up the handout and give each learner only one or two statements to work with. In this way, the survey stage will be much shorter, although the feedback stage will be longer as learners report back on different statements.
There is also a blank version so you can adapt to your own activity.