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Romance

Activity: Meet the parents

This is a fun activity that I used as part of a module on Family or Romance. It's particularly good with university age students in Taiwan and probably other cultures in which couples don't generally introduce their boy/girlfriend to the parents unless it's quite serious. Instructions

This is a role play in which a boyfriend must meet his girlfriend's parents for the first time. You can decide everything about situation.

1. Form groups of four. (I've had larger groups in which extras played roles of grandparents or sisters/brothers.)
2. Divide up the roles - father, mother, daughter, and the boyfriend. Obviously you can play a character of the opposite sex, i.e., a female student can play the boyfriend and a male can play the mother if necessary.
3. You can decide whether or not the parents like the boyfriend. Regardless, you do need to think about what the parents and boyfriend talk about. What are the circumstances under which they're meeting? Is it a planned or unplanned meeting? Where are they? How serious are the boyfriend and girlfriend?
4. Suggestion: When you're planning this activity, it might be fun for the parents to discuss and plan in private about what they're going to ask their daughter and her boyfriend. After all, in real life you don't always know what you're going to be asked, right? But if you do it this way, the entire group must first decide the basics, like how old everybody is and other basic histories and demographics.
5. Plan on at least a 5 minute role play per group.

Activity: Speed dating

For an explanation of speed dating, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_dating.

This activity has worked very well in my university level classes. In fact, I'd say this activity results in the most oral production among students of any activity I've ever done. My experience with this activity has been that it has all students speaking very close to 100% English at the same time for up to 80 minutes (40 minutes for each of two 50 minute periods).

The activity is based on the relatively modern practice of speed dating. I generally start preparing the activity at least one week before the actual 『speed dating' class. I start by having students read a couple of articles on speed dating followed by discussion. Here's how it breaks down:

Week one, possibly taking place over two weeks:

1. Read articles on speed dating.
2. Discuss the articles in groups.
3. In preparation for the speed dating activity, get into groups and create a list of at least 5 discussion questions and/or conversation topics that you think would be suitable for a speed dating event.
4. As a class, groups share their lists of questions and topics. It's good to end up with a list of between 15 to 20 questions.

Following week: The speed dating activity.

1. The teacher has printed out the list of questions that the class previously brainstormed given each student a copy.
2. The class splits into two equal groups of men and women. Typically, some females will have to be males or vice versa. My students have never minded and usually enjoy that element of the activity.
3. Students do not have to be themselves, and my students always create multiple profiles for themselves. Again, this is a fun element of the activity. They often come up with their profiles on the fly.
4. The teacher has arranged the class in such a way that pairs can sit together easily, and also so that people can easily get up and move to the next 『date'.
5. The teacher needs to do a little math and plan according to the class size and length of the period. For a 50-minute period with 20 students, or ten pairs, I generally plan on about 3 minutes per pair, and sometimes let them talk to almost 3 ½ minutes. The speed dating activity begins.
6. If this activity is suitable for your class culture and level, you'll find that students really get into it. After the first 50-minute period (of my 2-period classes), I have them take a good break, then for the second round I have them switch sexes, so all those who were male the first time around are now female and vice versa.

We don't do the whole speed dating routine as described in on-line articles. For example, students don't bother to mark down people they like, etc. I keep it quite simple. Still, it takes a fair bit of planning. Students do use the printed out questions when they can't think of anything to say, so I'd say that element is crucial. This activity is a blast and students generally remark how tired their jaws and voices are by the end of the class.