Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

Here’s a handy little language game you could use as a starter, filler or part of a lesson on negation. Hand out or display a list of present tense statements in the target language. They could be related to your current topic or just be random sentences using known vocabulary. The statements should be clearly wrong for best effect, I think. You could come up with absurd, amusing statements. Here are some examples: Madrid is the capital of France. Harry Kane plays tennis. Dogs speak French. Cats eat spaghetti. The sun rises in the west. Ariana Grande sings in Chinese. Mr Smith eats snails every morning. The moon is bigger than the sun. That sort of thing. Adapt the vocab to your class’s prior knowledge. Pupils work in pairs. Partner A makes the statement, then Partner B replies “That’s not true!” Then gives a corrected version, including a negative. For example, “Ariana Grande doesn’t sing in Chinese. She sings in English!” Partners take turns to make the initial statement. Fast classe...