Relative Clause Speaking Activity
If you’re studying about relative clauses (who, which, that), and want to lighten up the mood a bit you can use this “Who or What is it?” relative clause speaking activity. My students always love it. Relative clauses are a bit grammar heavy to teach and lessons about them are usually focused on pen and paper exercises. But, it is possible to practice relative clauses in a fun speaking activity too.
Here’s How to Set Up this Relative Clause Speaking Activity
Make a list of things or people and cut them up into little pieces and put them in an envelope (here’s my very Korea-centric who/what list). Put the students in groups of 4 and the first person has to choose a paper at random and keep it secret. Then, they give hints about it, preferably using relative clauses or reduced relative clauses.
An Example
For example, if they chose Barrack Obama, they could say things like:
“This is a man who’s from the USA.”
“I’m sure he’s someone everyone knows.”
“He has a lot of power which he uses to influence the whole world.”
The other 3 people on the team get to guess who it is and whoever guesses it correctly gets to keep the paper, gets 1 point and then is the next person who chooses a random paper and gives hints.
How to Avoid Endless, Incorrect Guesses
In order to avoid endless incorrect guesses, I make a rule that if you make an incorrect guess, you are “out” of that round unless all the other people also have incorrect guesses, in which case it starts over.
The Winner Is…
I give the students about 15 minutes and at the end, the person in each group with the most points gets a small prize.
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