Adjective-Noun Game

Scott Greene
scott [at] highway.or.jp
Nagoya Gakuin University (Nagoya, Japan)

Objective

To get students to think about and practice adjective-noun combinations.

Level

This game works well with all levels. Lower level students can make up simple sentences and higher level students more complex ones.

The Game

The purpose of this game is to give students the chance to practice adjective-noun combinations. Begin by giving them a male or female first name. They must then invent a sentence similar to the following:

Albert likes awful apes.
Betty likes baby boys.
Linda likes little limes.
Richard likes roaring racecars.
Wendy likes wiggling worms.

The game should move fast, so you should be prepared with a list of names to fire at your students. You should go through the list ahead of time to make sure that you can think of matching adjective-noun combinations within the vocabulary range of your students. It is sometimes helpful to have a large list of alphabetized adjectives xeroxed off and ready to hand out, especially for lower level students.

Following are names for every letter of the alphabet to get you started:

Andy, Betty, Carmine, Daniel, Ed, Francis, Grover, Harry, Ingrid, John, Kris, Linda, Mark, Norman, Orville, Patty, Quentin, Rachel, Sam, Tom, Ursula, Victor, William, Xavier, Yolanda, Zelda.

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 7, July 1997
http://iteslj.org/