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TitleUsing a Game to Facilitate Complexity in Pragmatic Interactions
SourceCASLS Activity of the Week
Body

By Ben Pearson, University of Oregon graduate student in the LTS program.

Objectives:

  • Students will be able to observe and interpret the mannerisms and strategies that a group of English speakers use as they play the hidden-roles game Are you the Traitor?
  • Students will be able to understand more complex pragmatic interactions, like bluffing and negotiation tactics, that are involved in discourse.
  • Students will be able to use strategic language, such as bluffing and negotiation, while playing Are you the Traitor?

Procedure:

Part 1 - Observation

  1. The teacher plays a video clip showing a demonstration of the party game Are you the Traitor? For this section, the teacher will not explain the rules of the game or how to win, but rather present the students with some discussion questions about how the players are behaving (See Materials below).
  2. The teacher goes over the questions with the class and then plays the video again, only this time telling the students to pay attention to the mannerisms and strategies that the players in the video are using. After watching the video, the teacher gives the students time to organize their thoughts, and then share their thoughts in pairs first, and finally share their thoughts with the whole class.

Part 2 - Analysis

  1. The teacher uses the points that the students brought up in the discussion to lead into a more controlled discussion about speech acts and pragmatic language use, specifically negotiation tactics and bluffing. By introducing this to the students, the teacher will facilitate their understanding of the more complex pragmatic interactions involved in discourse.
  2. After this, the teacher returns to Are you the Traitor? and elaborates more on the rules and objectives of the game, handing out the chart which shows which target person the player has to point at in order for their team to win (See Materials below).
  3. From there, the teacher asks the students to remember the players in the video clip and to determine what card they had based off of how they behaved and what kind of questions they were asking. The teacher could play the video clip again if the students need a reminder. Using the same ‘Think - Pair - Share’ exercise before, the teacher will challenge the students to explain why particular players behaved in a certain way.

Part 3 - Extension

  1. After making sure that the students understand the rules of the game and the complexity of the interactions, the teacher breaks the students up into equal groups and has them actually play Are you the Traitor? The teacher projects the general procedure of the game on a screen so that the students can play the game more smoothly. In each group, there should be a scorekeeper who keeps track of how many games each team wins. The students are allowed to keep their handouts in order to make sure they know who they need to point at in order to win. The teacher should also explicitly tell the students not to show their card to anyone; it could lose the game for them! As the games are going on, the teacher provides assistance or suggestions, if necessary.
  2. After the students have played a decent number of games, the teacher will bring the class back together and ask them how they liked the game, what happened in their groups, and what strategies they came up with. The teacher will bring the students back to the topic of speech acts and pragmatic language use by referring to some of the strategies that the students came up with in order to win the game for their team.

Materials:

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are the players trying to figure out from the other players?
  2. What sorts of body movements/behaviors do you notice the players doing?
  3. What sorts of questions are the players asking? Are the players telling the truth? How can you tell?
  4. How do you know the game is over?

Find the Rules and Guiding Chart here

Publishdate2015-05-25 02:15:01