Menu
The Telephone Game is played all around the world.
To play, a group of children sit in a circle. The first child whispers something into the ear of the person next to him. That person in turn whispers the same sentence into the ear of the person next to her and so on around the circle. Once the phrase gets to the last person, that person says it out loud. Then the original person who said it tells what they originally said. The fun in this game lies in seeing how the sentence changes after being whispered from person to person.
It also shows how unreliable word of mouth can be.
Rules and Hard Phrases to Play the Telephone Game. The Telephone game is a real entertainer for you and your friends or family. You don't need cards, boards, paper, pencil, or any other physical object to play it. The only thing you need to do is include as many people as you can; the more the merrier.
According to Wikipedia, along with the name “Chinese Whispers”, “…it is also known under various other names depending on locality, such as Russian scandal,whisper down the lane, broken telephone, operator, grapevine, gossip, don’t drink the milk, secret message, the messenger game, and pass the message among others. In France, it is called téléphone arabe (Arabic telephone) or – more politically correct –téléphone sans fil (wireless telephone). In Malaysia, this game is commonly referred to as telefon rosak, which translates to broken telephone.”
What do you call the Telephone Game in your country?
*****
Photo: Two Girls, Tigray (Ethiopia) by Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia, cc.
Before doing this group activity, you should have explained a specific sound that you’d like your students to pronounce better. I often do this activity to practice the /l/ and /r/ sounds, or the /th/ sounds.
For an overview of how to conduct a pronunciation lesson, visit this page.
A Twist: Chinese Whispers for English Pronunciation
Chinese Whispers is essentially a telephone relay game where players sit in a row/circle and whisper a phrase into each other’s ears. As the phrase gets passed along, it’ll change due to mispronunciation or memory problems. At the end, the student announces what phrase they heard, which often has changed, and everyone laughs.
For English class, you can use this concept in the following manner.
Activity Preparation
First write down a few sentences in your notebook that test the target sounds you introduced earlier. The sentences should not be too long, and ideally they are still grammatical if students make a pronunciation mistake. For example:- Larry rarely reads. (testing /r/ or /l/ . This sentence is good because if they mispronounce it “Larry really leads”, it still makes grammatical sense)
- She sits on the sheet. (testing /s/ or /sh/)
- The lamb had rice on his belly. (testing /r/ or /l/ again – The ram had lice on his berry?)
You get the idea.
Activity Execution
- Put the students in groups of four or five.
- Have them sit in a row.
- Make sure the last student has a piece of paper and a pencil. Tell him/her that they will have to write down a sentence.
- Take the first students from each group outside of the class and say a sentence to them (e.g.”The fly flew into the van.”)
- The first student should then tell the sentence to the second student who will relay it to the third student, and so on until it reaches the writer, who writes it down.
- Repeat the activity with new sentences and have the students switch roles as need be so everyone gets a chance to write.
- Afterwards, check the sentences. Award points for the closest answers.
This activity is great fun because the students always make mistakes. Start with simple sentences so as to not overwhelm them.
Enjoy your English classes.
— Matthew Barton / Creator of ESL website Englishcurrent.com
Related Pages