The following activity is an example of controlled practice of questions and short
answers: e.g. did she leave work late? Yes, she did or no, she didn’t. The example is
in the simple past but you can change the tense. The objective of the activity is to
answer questions without using the words yes or no.
Start by demonstrating the activity to the class. Students ask you questions about what
you did yesterday; you reply without hesitating and without using the words “yes” or
“no”. For the first round, you could write some questions on the board as prompts, so
students don’t spend too long formulating their questions. Example:
Did you go to work yesterday?
Did you finish work at 6pm?
Did you have lunch with friends?
Students read out the questions and the person in the hot seat (this is the teacher
during the presentation phase) responds with I did or I didn’t.
You continue with this for one minute. To help with timing, you can take in a stopwatch,
an egg timer or ask a student to time you. If anybody uses the words yes or no, they
are eliminated. If somebody speaks for one minute without using those words, he/she
gets 10 points. You could then ask a student to come to the front of the class to
provide further demonstration of the activity.
When students are clear about what is expected of them, separate them into groups of
at least three. One person is in the hot seat and the others ask questions; one person
is responsible for keeping an eye on the time.
You can find more games that provide controlled practice of language in the
Communication Games series.
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