Simon Says - issues and variations

You should know the game Simon Says already. In case you don't, it's usually used to teach parts of the body. It's the one where students stand up, the teachers gives instructions to student to touch parts of their body. If the teacher precedes the instruction with "Simon Says" (or rather its target language equivalent - in French it is Jacques a dit) students must perform the gesture, if the teacher does not say "Simon Says", they must not perform the gesture. In general, students who make a mistake drop out.

It's an execllent game - and not just for near beginners. It provides lots of simple input and repetition, demands careful listening, and is just fun. I never knew it fail.

One slight downside, where students drop out, is that those students are no longer involved. (I found they were still engage to some degree, however.) The dropping out part does add urgency and an extra fun element, but if you wanted to avoid that, you could keep a tally of  points lost by students who get the instruction wrong. A bit cumbersome?? Maybe students could keep their own tally.

There are variations of the game you could use which maintain the careful listening and fun elements. Here are three:

1. Directions

Instead of teaching parts of the body, teach directions such as left, right, up, down and straight ahead. So in French the teacher would say:

• Jacques a dit pointez vers le haut. (Jacques said point upwards)
• Jacques a dit pointez vers le bas. (Jacques aid point downwards)
• Jacques a dit pointez à gauche. (left)
• Jacques a dit pointez à droite. (right)
• Pointez tout droit devant vous. (straight ahead - Students should not do the gesture.)

Or, more simply, do en haut, en bas, à droite, à gauche, tout droit (probably more productive as learned chunks):

• En haut ! (Up!)
• En bas ! (Down!)
• À gauche ! (Left!)
• À droite ! (Right!)
• Tout droit ! (Straight ahead!)

2. Sports and pastimes

The same rules apply, but this time tell students to mime sports or other pastimes. Obvious candidates with clear body movements would be: football, tennis, ping pong, golf, swimming, walking, jogging, birdwatching, weight lifting, boxing.

Simon says "play football", etc

3. Morning routine

This time, gestures could be slecetd from: washing face, having a shower, brushing teeth, getting dressed, putting on a tie, brushing hair, eating breakfast, drinking coffee, packing a school bag.

Simon says "brush your hair" etc.

4. Jobs

Good examples could be: drive a bus, paint a wall, examine a patient (stethoscope), be a tennis player, work in IT (typing on a keyboard), be a carpenter, be a postman/woman, be a ticket inspector.

You'd need to demo and practise the gestures.

Research support?

All of these are in the tradition of the TPR method (Total Physical Response) made known by James J. Asher in the 1960s.  In general, the use of gesture for acquiring vocabulary is supported by research studies - even watching someone performing gestures has been found to improve memory for vocabulary (Macedonia et al., 2019). The same authors argue that gestures improve vocabulary learning because they deepen encoding and create sensorimotor representations of word meaning, leading to stronger memory traces. (Just as writing words down helps with later recall.) The fun element helps generate motivation in a class and this, indirectly, should promote self-efficacy and achievement.

Reference

Macedonia, Repetto, Ischebeck & Mueller (2019). Depth of Encoding Through Observed Gestures in Foreign Language Word Learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 33.