Asmaa Taha Ariadna Lugo Kenna Daniel

Guess Who? Interpersonal Technology Based Task

The set-up: Students at the beginning to intermediate level. This activity can be modified for students of any language: English, Spanish, Arabic, or Italian. The key is that students must have cultural knowledge of the actors being presented, which could be part of a unit with cultural information presented before the task was given.

Technology: Students are required to do internet research at home on a famous actor in the target language, before giving a brief presentation in class. The activity itself is focused on movie trailers from YouTube that will be shown in class.

Pre-task: Before class, students choose a famous actor from the target language, and present a brief biography on that actor, including adjectives to describe physical and personality traits. This will allow students to review terminology needed for the task, as well as familiarize themselves with the actors.

The task: This task is focused on oral interpersonal communication because students are required to interact with each other and negotiate meaning in order to understand the clues to guess the right answer. This task helps learners to interpret authentic oral, visual and cultural artifacts in the target language. There will also be a focus on reading and writing as students are given an information-gap sheet to follow as they complete the task. The sheet is just a guide, so students are still engaged in spontaneous communication. The task also encourages interpretative communication on the part of the students who watch the video, because they have to interpret what they see in order to describe it to the other students. As students research the actor they are presenting, they will also be engaging in written interpretive communication.

The class is split into groups of two, depending on class size the class could be split into smaller groups.

One group leaves the classroom while the other group stays and is shown a short film trailer that features one or two famous actors. The film trailers are chosen by students based on the actor who they presented to the class, and will last no more than two minutes each.

After the group watches the film clip, the other group enters and begins to ask questions to try to guess the actor(s) depicted in the video. The group who watched the video will respond to the questions using adjectives to describe who they saw without saying who it is.
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The group who didnt see the video and is tasked with asking questions will be giving a handout with questions to ask. When students leave the classroom, they will start to formulate questions that are not explicitly written on the handout such as constructing questions about physical characteristics. By asking these questions, students will receive answers that will help them to identify the person being described. This kind of information-gap activity will aid students in getting to an answer and will keep them and their questions and answers on task.

Students will be encouraged to use gestures to convey meaning, particularly if they cannot remember how to say a specific adjective.

After the group has guessed the actor, there will be a report back in which students go around and check the questions they asked and the answers to understand how they guessed the actor in order for the teacher to give them feedback.

Then the groups switch roles. This task can be done multiple times over the course of one class, or can be carried over into other lessons. If each student is tasked with giving a brief presentation, then this task could extend into many lessons.

Post-activity: Students write a brief paragraph describing their favorite actor or actress and why he/she is their favorite. Students should include information from the presentations and information gathered from the information-gap activity during the task.

Sample questions for information-gap handout for students guessing the actor.

1. Is it an actor or an actress? 2. Is he/she dead or alive? 3. How old is he/she? 4. Where is he/she from? 5. Ask about physical characteristics. Height, weight, hair color etc. 6. Ask about personality traits. Funny, dramatic, nice, mean etc. 7. Ask about the actors work. Kind of films, other talents etc. 8. Ask about the actors personal life. Husband or wife? etc.