Taboo Games

 Taboo Games

By ‘Taboo Games’ I do not mean games that you should not play. Rather, I am talking about games that are based on the popular game of Taboo, i.e., games in which you must describe a word without actually saying that word. For example: “It’s a popular pet that likes to sleep, eats fish, has big eyes and pointed ears and doesn’t like dogs ...”

There are various set-ups for playing this kind of game.

Version 1: Teacher/Student to Class Taboo

The teacher describes a flashcard vocabulary item to the class. The first student to name the FC can receive points for their team (or progress along whatever scoring system is being used). This game can also be used without FCs – the teacher describes any word to the class, the first student to say what this word is can receive points for their team.

Students can take turns to act as the teacher. They can either describe the FCs that you give them or the words (written down on small pieces of paper) that you give them.

Version 2: Student to Team Taboo

When the students act as the teacher, they can either be describing the vocabulary for the whole class to guess, or, to make things more competitive, they can have one minute to describe a bunch of words/FCs to their team only. Once finished, a student from the other team can come up to describe words/FCs for one minute to their team. Possibly lots of students can take a turn; scores are tallied up at the end and the team who have guessed the most words overall are the winners.

Version 3: Backs to the Whiteboard

This version is often known as ‘Backs to the Whiteboard’.

A student is picked to come to the front. They stand facing away from the whiteboard, towards the class (or you could provide a chair for them to sit on).

The teacher now sticks an FC (or writes a word) on the board behind them. Students have to describe this word to the student – they can all vocally jump in together; but if everyone starts talking at the same time or one student is dominating, you can get them to put their hands up, giving their descriptions of the word one at a time. When they are successful and the student says the word, another student is picked to go up and be the one with their ‘back to the whiteboard’.

This game is not usually played for points; just for fun.

Version 4: Backs to the Whiteboard Relay

So, how to play ‘Backs to the Whiteboard’ for points?

One idea is to get the two #1 students to the front to play first. The teacher holds up the FC (or writes the word) behind them and the rest of the students proceed with their descriptions.

The first of the #1 students to say the word can sit down and is replaced by the #2s from their team. The games starts up again when the teacher holds up a different FC (or writes a new word) behind the two students. The first of these students to say the word can sit down and is replaced by the next student from their team.

The first team of students to have had all their members successfully take a turn are the winners.

One problem with this game is that the possibility is there for one student to be stuck in front of the whiteboard for a long time. Let us say for example that the #1s from team A is finding this game difficult. They are beaten by team B’s #1s; beaten again by team B’s #2s; beaten again by team B’s #3s ... the rest of their team are getting frustrated. …

To overcome this problem you could have a rule that every student can only be in front of the whiteboard for two rounds: e.g., in the above example, team A’s #1s is beaten by team B’s #1s so team B’s #1s goes back to their seat and is replaced by team B’s #2s. Then in the next round, when team A’s #1s loses to team B’s #2s, both of these students now return to their seats and are replaced by team A’s #2s and team B’s #3s.

Another problem, as previously mentioned, is that with all the class shouting descriptions at the same time, it can be a little chaotic. If your class gets like this, you can set a rule that students must have their hands up: then you select them one at a time. It is a good idea to not allow one student too much time here, instead it is better to keep it snappy, picking one student, then another, then another. So if one student is taking too long to offer a description or is hogging attention by offering a lengthy description of the word, then just pick another student to take their turn at trying to describe the word.

A final problem worth mentioning is that students can use body language and miming actions to get across their meaning. If your class are doing too much of this, you can try blindfolding the two students who are in front of the whiteboard.

Version 5: Backs to the Whiteboard – Multiple Words

For one more version of ‘Backs to the Whiteboard’, get two students to the front, let us say the #4s from team A and the #2s from team B. These two students sit or stand with their backs to the whiteboard just like with Version 4. However there is no changeover of students in this version, so it is similar to Version 3 also.

In Version 5, the teacher sticks a number of FCs (or writes a number of vocabulary items) on the whiteboard. A good number to start with is six words behind the team A student and six words behind the team B student.

Whiteboard

Team A                                          Team B

phone                                          camera

awful                                          grumpy

bank                                          hospital

paraglide                                          passport

shower                                          bedroom

moon                                          curtain

Once the game is set up and ready, the students from team A must make their representative team member (the one with their back to the whiteboard) say the six words from the team A section. The students from team B must do the same for their team member; make them say the words from the team B section. The first student to say all of their words is the winner and receives points for their team. The game can then be repeated with different students taking a turn – either mix up the vocabulary or introduce different words each time.

As with Version 3, you can sometimes get a problem when all the students shout at once. To overcome this you can have each team form a line facing their representative team member. The first student of each line says one sentence/prompt to try to help their team member guess the word. They then go to the back of the line and the next student tries again with a different sentence/prompt to help their team member guess the word.

Students can also complain that the other team’s words were easier. To avoid this you can try writing words of a similar topic or difficulty next to each other (as shown in the above diagram). If they still complain, remind them who the teacher is.

Version 6: Duelling Taboo

A taboo ‘duelling game’ where two students come to the front and compete to be the first to name which word the teacher is describing – see Dueling Sentences.

Version 7: Teacher to Team Taboo

The teacher stands at the front with a huge, mixed up pile of FCs in their hand. The FCs are faced to the teacher so the students cannot see them. The teacher calls the [team A] students to come and stand in front of them. They then choose one team B student to come and be the scorer (to mark one point on the whiteboard for each correctly guessed FC). Next they pick another student from team B to be the timer (to look at their watch or the clock and say, “Go!”, and after one minute say, “Stop!”)

Now the game commences: the teacher spends one minute describing the FCs in the pile to the [team A] students. After one minute the timer says, “Stop”, and the class look to the scorer by the whiteboard to see how many points [team A] have gained.

The teams then swap over; a scorer and timer from [team A] are chosen and the game starts up again.

Version 8: Team to Teacher Taboo

This is exactly the same as Version 7 except this time the teacher turns the flashcards so that only the students can see them. Therefore in this game each team takes a turn at spending one minute describing the FCs to the teacher. Points are tallied up by the scorer for each time the teacher correctly guesses an FC.

It is good to play Version 7 first and then, once the students have got used to the game, you can switch to Version 8.

Also note that you can experiment with the time used to play the game – giving them ‘one minute’ is just an example.

Version 9: Pair Taboo

Not really a flashcard game, but another great activity is to write down a list of words on a piece of paper, write down a different list of words on another piece of paper; make copies of these; get students into pairs and have them taking turns to describe a word from their list to their partner (who will have a different list).

When a student’s partner says the word, this can be crossed off and it is now the partner’s turn to describe one of their words, etc.

A Note on Taboo Games

Taboo games are often used to practise relative clauses (‘A place where ...’, ‘A thing which ...’, ‘A person who ...’). However, with kids it is often (but not always!) best to focus on fluency rather than accuracy. For instance, if their sentences are enthusiastic but contain grammatical errors (e.g., “A cat like to eat what?”) then this can be overlooked. Taboo games work well at getting students to open up with the language, to use whatever words and phrases they can, and to be constantly correcting grammatical errors may have a detrimental effect. With fluency activities you do not want to stilt their enthusiasm or they will end up speaking too slowly and carefully; they may even give up altogether. A better option would be to note down common mistakes and work on these later. (This viewpoint is of course debatable – some teachers place a greater importance upon ‘accuracy right from the start’ to avoid fossilisation.)