German uses the dative case to make compliments. You can see a few examples below:
Dein Hemd gefällt mir echt. oder
Die Karfoffel, die du gekocht hast, schmecken mir.
There are of course many things one can make compliments about. For this activity I had the entire class stand in a large circle. I explained that one person would begin by picking another student and make him/her a compliment. The student would have to answer appropriately by thanking the person making the compliment and/or downplaying the compliment. If the person making the compliment made a correct compliment without any grammar mistakes, then the student who received the compliment would be free to choose another student and make him/her a compliment.
Students were also informed that the following rules would also apply:
- A compliment could only be made once. Thus, if someone said "I like your shoes" then no one else could make the same compliment.
- The other stipulation was that students had to come up with a compliment within 20 seconds and it needed to be grammatically correct.
If a student was unable to make a correct compliment or if they repeated a previously made compliment then they would be eliminated. In effect, this would be similar to the game dodge ball. The game proceeds at a very rapid pace and once the obvious or easy compliments are exhausted students are forced to dig deeper into their repertoire of vocabulary in order to continue to make compliments. Eventually one student remained as the winner of the activity. I would estimate that the entire class covered over 100 things to compliment each other on. Every student was able to participate several times before eliminations began to occur. This activity helped them review dative verbs as well as a great deal of current and previous vocabulary. I encourage you to try the activity and hope you find adds to your lessons.
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