Adult learners in a classroom having animated discussion

Lost your voice

This activity is based around typical problems that people can have in places such as a hotel, a restaurant or the shops. The example below is set in a hotel, but you can adapt this to any scenario where functional language would be used. You will need to prepare some situations before the activity.

Procedure

Put learners into small groups.
Tell the learners they are in a hotel. Explain that one learner in the group is the guest, and the other learners are the receptionists. The guest has some problems that they need to tell the receptionists about. However, the guest has lost their voice and can only mime!
Give the guest in each group a problem card, for example the TV doesn't work, the window is broken or the shower in my room doesn't have any hot water. The guest mimes and the receptionists need to guess the problem.
To make it more challenging and to revise functional language, you could make it so they must guess what is written on the card word for word, e.g. Could you help me please? The key to my room doesn't open the door.
The first receptionist to guess wins a point and keeps the card.
Then change roles so another learner in the group is the guest, and give them a new problem card to mime.
When all the problems have been guessed, ask learners to role play the different situations.

Such language game is enjoyable and interesting in language teaching as it enhances theme sprit and collaborative learning. Besides, to guess what is written on problem cards,students should have vocabulary capacity to express the idea of the message. Such game help them develop their vocabulary and grammar knowledges.

This is an enjoyable game to the students it help them to show their talent and develop their vocabulary and grammar language. Also, help them to use their brain effectively to guess the word.

I think it is this activity stimulates learning and makes the lesson more interesting and productive

I think this is very interesting and enjoyable will let learning in easy and simple ways

For some students who are not as confident in speaking English as SL, it can be a good method to express his/her opinions at the initial stage of learning and be creative.

This is an interesting game. Students are given all equal opportunity to learn while enjoying.

I think that this game is quite interactive and gives the students a chance to process in depth, the meaning of the dialogue and purpose, so they can later express it through mime!

The activity above is an example of a mime game/activity. It is a kind of guessing games where a teacher give a word, phrase or sentences to a learner and the learner mimes it while his or her group try to guess what he/she means. This is an enjoyable and effective learning strategy to teach grammar than lecturing or memorization. Utilizing games in teaching gives the students the opportunity to practice their communication and develop as well as reinforce some grammar concepts that children already learned. Activities such as this also encourages creativity , imagination and movement among the learners. Making an effort to create conducive and pleasurable activity like this one will have positive and lasting effect on student's learning.

This is exciting game. Students can show their creativity and enjoy the game.

This is a fun, well-designed, low-prep activity that's great for reviewing functional and complaint language in a practical and memorable way.

Students will definitely enjoy this game

I think this is a fantastic, highly engaging activity for the classroom. Miming the problems adds a fun, low-pressure element that breaks the ice, while the transition into a full role-play at the end ensures students still get to practice actual spoken production.

Ss use functional language to respond in everyday situation and have fun.They use physical activity depending on the visual prompt to elicit topic vocabulary from the receptionist.Stress levels drop,weak students can mime first to gain time and see others model.Ss bond when lough and learn.

I love the idea of using miming to teach functional English. The person who mimes must comprehend the language to mime it correctly and the receptionist must produce it. Great fun!

It's such a great activity to teach them functional language, it'll engage the students and will be a Fun. I'll definitely use situation based activities to make learning more meaningful and engaging.