The activity I'm using in my inaugural post is designed to practice the subjunctive in Spanish adjectival clauses. These instructions might look complicated, but really, this is a fairly easy game with minimal preparation necessary.
Basically, the way the activity works is that half the students are designated as "vendors" and the other half as "customers." Customers create shopping lists of specific items and go searching for them in the market. The challenge is to use the subjunctive or the indicative in adjectival clauses when asking for the items on their lists depending on whether the customers know an item to be available or not.
I chose flowers as the commodity in my market, but you could use just about any object you might buy in a marketplace or shopping center: clothes, food, pets, artesanía... The only stipulation is that all members of the chosen category must describable with the same adjectives. Clothes, for example, might be divided by type: shirts, pants, skirts, and hats, and the corresponding adjectives that might apply to each item could include: colorful, big, small, fashionable, cheap, purple, striped, cotton, and so forth.
PREPARATION
I have used a PowerPoint slide to present the basics of the information outlined in this section. The table below indicates the variety of items (in this case flowers) available for sale or purchase. I have filled it out to indicate the choices a vendor might make.
Before the activity begins, vendors and customers must make the following preparations:
Vendors choose 5 of the possible varieties of flowers that they will have in stock, and ONE (indicated by the star in the table) "special." I give each vendor a half-sheet of scrap paper, which they can fold in half into a table-tent. On the side that faces the customers, they write the name of the flower that’s on sale (they can be creative with their tablero and advertising). On the side facing themselves, they write the names of all the flowers they have chosen (as a memory aid more than anything).
Customers make a shopping list of three types/colors of flowers that they want to put into a bouquet. They write their choices on another bit of scrap paper (keeping them honest and from changing their bouquet choices when and if they can’t immediately find the flowers they need).
PHYSICAL SET-UP
The speed-dating set up is really versatile and you can use it for any situation/conversation set up where you want to get students to talk one-on-one with a variety of their classmates. For this game, the set-up is modified as follows:
The vendors (in blue) are set up in a row (simulating flower kiosks/stalls in a market), and the customers (green) each sit facing one of the vendors (sort of like the set up for pirámide). If there is an uneven number of students in the class, there may end up being two customers to a vendor or two vendors to a customer. After a minute-ish of talking to the first vendor, (you can decide how much time is enough) stop the transactions and have all the customers get up and move on to the next vendor (the vendors stay put, the customers all move one desk to the right or left).
BUYING AND SELLING: GRAMMAR PRACTICE
The customers can see on the "tablero" of the vendor which flower is "a la venta". If that is one of the flowers s/he needs, the customer can ask for it by saying something like:
Necesito los claveles que SON azules.If they are looking for a flower that is not mentioned on the tablero, they can request it with a sentence like:
INDICATIVE IN ADJECTIVAL CLAUSES REQUIRED (SUCH AN OBJECT IS KNOWN TO EXIST)
(A bit stilted sounding, perhaps, but it IS a grammar practice activity, so sometimes awkwardness is par for the course.)
Busco unas margaritas que SEAN rojas. ¿Las tiene?I often model the sentences or put up an example sentence or phrase on the board that they can follow along with until they are comfortable making up their own (and hopefully they eventually will be).
SUBJUNCTIVE IN ADJECTIVAL CLAUSES REQUIRED (SUCH AN OBJECT IS NOT KNOWN TO EXIST)
Each customer can ask an individual vendor for as many of their desired flowers as they have time to request. They are limited only by the amount of time in each segment of the speed dating.
WINNING, ENDING THE GAME, AND REVERSING ROLES
After it seems that one or two (or however many, on your discretion) customers have collected their desired bouquets, you can declare the successful clients winners and call an end to the first round of the game. I usually base this off of whether or not there has been sufficient time for each customer to get practice making requests. If a student finishes after talking to only one or two vendors, I might give him or her an extra bonus flower to look for while the others have more time to practice and gather their bouquets.
At this point, the vendors get rid of their tableros and become customers, and the customers pick up a sheet of paper to make a tablero and take over a kiosk space. The students all prepare again, choosing flowers to sell or collect according to their new position.
Done!
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