A World without Words – Communication By Clapping
To motivate students to think about the nature of language and language acquisition, the following activity is great fun. It requires a lot of patience and careful management. The activity is to communicate only through clapping in order to move a student to a particular position in the room.
Setup
I ask one game student to leave the room so that he cannot hear the class instructions. He will be invited back to a very strange environment, and that he shouldn’t be embarrassed or worried about the activity, but just do what he thought we wanted him to do.
Once he leaves the room, I tell the students that they may not talk under any circumstances from now on. They should not discuss with one another the activity until I say they can. I will bring the volunteer back into the room, and they are to make him move to the front of the room standing exactly where I am now (move to some unlikely position first). They can do this only by clapping. They can use body language if they must, but can’t use pointing, but or try to mouth words to the subject. I then ask one student to go and get the subject and bring him into the room.
The likely result is disaster! Allow the disaster to run for a while and then stop the class. Ask the subject to leave. Ask a couple of students to to review what happened, allow students one minute to discuss with one another strategies. In one minute, stop the discussion, and get the subject back in.
Repeat this a few times. It may result in total disaster, but more likely they will eventually settle on a hot/cold strategy whereby the clapping intensifies as the subject moves to the room.
A New Subject
If possible, then ask another teacher to come to the room – this may need to be setup ahead of time. The class should by this point be quite coordinated in their efforts, and hopefully the teacher will move to the correct position.
Discussion
