This is a simple ‘true-false’ game which I’ve adapted from Jackie Bolen’s ESL book called 39 Speaking Activities. (The book contains mainly well known communicative games, often suitable for intermediate level and above.)
The aim is to get students to practise hearing, seeing and using ‘never’ with past tense verbs. So in French you would be repeatedly hearing and using patterns like “Je n’ai jamais visité la France” or “Je n’ai jamais joué au golf”.
Model and write up some examples of your own. Translate if necessary. Explain what is happening structurally you think this is useful (or do it later). Students must guess (e.g. show on mini-whiteboards or by a show of hands) whether what you say is true or false. Choose examples from your own life to add interest, e.g. “Je n’ai jamais mangé de la viande.” (‘I have never eaten meat’.) If you can think of surprising ones, so much the better. Absurd ones are good too: “ Je n’ai jamais visité l’Antarctique.” ( ‘I have never visited the Antarctic’.)
Then get students into pairs and have them play the same guessing game. By now their appetite for the activity may have been whetted. There could be different ways to set this up:
1. With stronger classes they can just make them up on the spot, either taking turns, or with one student doing several in sequence, then the second student doing the same.
2. Allow students 5-10 minutes to secretly write some down, then carry out the task.
3. With weaker classes, display some model sentence starters to scaffold the task, e.g. I have never played, I have never eaten, I have never visited, I have never seen, etc.
This is an example of a ‘pushed output’ activity, because you are forcing students to practise a grammatical or lexicogrammatical pattern (in this case ‘I have never’). The case for doing it, apart from the fun, guessing game, communicative element), is that the sheer repeated exposure to and use of the pattern will help students automatise it for future comprehension and use.
Extensions to the activity could include:
1. Talk for as long as you can about things you have never done (‘Just a minute’-style).
2. Do a time-limited writing activity. ‘How many sentences can you write in 10 minutes? (Scaffolds may be needed.)
3. Add a new element: “I have never,,,, but I would like to…. because…”
4. Guess ten more things the teacher has never done (using third person).
5. Name 10 things the queen has probably never done (e.g. driven a bus, played darts, been to a rock festival, swum the Channel…)
6. Translate some sentences from English.
7. Have students to hold a QA conversation, asking each other “Have you ever…?”
Maybe you can think of other variations.
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