I have mentioned Tric a Quiz here and I know it’s confusing. I can’t even find where it’s written about – in some comment somewhere. Basically it’s when we start a quiz and question 1 is “Yes or no, the boy is unhappy”. Say the answer is yes. Normally on the regular old Quick Quiz the students just answer the question. But in Tric a Quiz (TQ), some supertar might just say that it depends. You then invite her to expand on that in the TL. She might say that it depends because of some weird reason connected to the story. Then you and the class just start talking about that. They think they have tricked you into not being able to continue on with the quiz, but you have tricked them into communicating with you in the TL. You would then continue the test by asking the next question, asking, say, if the man is 47, which is also true. But again, in the funny atmosphere of Tric a Quiz, some kid says he thinks the man is 27. Again, you ask why. They make something up. It goes further and further away from the quiz, getting more and more silly. A parallel story starts to happen. The motivation for them is no test. Since the Quick Quiz is generally given right there at the end of class, this light banter, such good CI, only usually lasts five minutes until the end of class anyway, but it is better than the quiz in terms of language gains, so I do it. This probably wouldn’t work in level one classes because of the need for output from the kids. But then Corinne ramped this whole idea to the next level with this:
Hello Ben,
Here are some points about TQ to share:
- My students like the name! The game lifted our second semester spirits. Along with textivate.com and imtranslator.com, it has given us so many more opportunities to reread.
- It worked with both my French and Russian classes, even those who are not doing well usually in interpersonal communication skills.
- I hadn’t prepared my suggestions ahead of time, I’m so random, but I looked at parts of each sentence that could be variables and then at my question word poster for inspiration and variety.
- I sometimes told them that I knew extra information about the story, and told them the new detail. Other times I read an existing detail and said it could not have happened like that, then told them the alternative “truth”.
- Then I asked them: do you accept that or do you dispute it? An agreed upon dispute won them a point
- I set up the scoreboard, class against me. In one class a student wanted to “give me a point”, but everyone else squealed “non!” when I walked to the board to reward my idea.
- Mostly I kept within bounds, but I felt they were stretching the bounds of their understanding in that atmosphere of familiarity with the basic structures and the focus on the story and the game.
Many times there was more than one student suggestion, so I insisted that they come to a consensus which argument they would put forward for the point – hah! More interaction in L2! More opportunity to circle the sentence with the two suggestions to see which they thought was more plausible.
Of course there were some who were not so directly involved, but I counted involvement as looking like they cared what would happen, reacting to the to and fro of the game and giving any appropriate ideas in the context even if partly in English.
If I can, when deciding to do this again, I shall prepare some ideas in advance, but that’s almost cheating. I think this had such power because the classes saw me having to think on my feet too. It was a genuine competition, not an educational activity masquerading as a game.
I know I should have filmed it all. I will get a list of kids I must avoid getting in the picture, then I will video the next time we play TQ for sure.
Corinne