Goodbye game

Preparation

No preparation is really necessary for this activity. However, it might be useful to have the situations below prepared on the board in advance. There is also a worksheet of how to say goodbye in different languages that you could use if you wish.

Procedure

• Elicit different ways of saying goodbye in English. Ask learners if they know how people say goodbye in different countries/languages. Here, you could have learners do the worksheet activity.
• Ask learners what will happen at the end of the class. Elicit that everyone will say goodbye to each other. Elicit phrases from the learners in order to build a typical dialogue between teacher and students at the end of a class.
• Now write up different situations on the board. These could include the following, but also encourage learners to add their own:
  • A parent saying goodbye to their child on the first day of school.
  • A soldier saying goodbye to their partner as they go to fight in a war.
  • A prisoner saying goodbye to their cellmate before they are released.
  • A president saying goodbye to another president after an important meeting.
  • A teenager saying goodbye to their parents before leaving to go on a long trip.
  • An astronaut saying goodbye to their family before leaving for a space mission.
• Now put the learners into pairs and ask them to choose a situation but not tell anyone. Ask them to write a short dialogue for their situation. Monitor and help with language where necessary.
• Learners can then act their dialogues out in front of the class. Tell the rest of the class to listen carefully and guess which situation is being acted out each time. When checking, encourage them to give reasons for their guess to elicit key words and phrases.

Extension

• Ask learners to share their dialogues with each other in order to act out more situations for further practice.
• You could also ask learners to record their dialogues and create gap-fill activities or jumbled dialogues for other pairs to complete.