Chapter I organizing teaching listening games

GAMES FOR LISTENING
CARING AND SHARING GAMES
Our ideas for this section derive, in part, from the work of G. Markowitz and, in part, from the experience of youth club and community leaders.
All the games in this section demand and encourage trust and interest in others. We believe these values are native to everyone. However, in some cultures they may not be associated with school or college and with foreign-language learning. You may for this reason have some difficulty in overcoming your learners' shyness or reluctance to share personal feelings and experiences with other class members. Only you can decide how and when to make the attempt to introduce the learners to caring and sharing activities, but we believe the following points to be generally true:
1.The teacher must believe-and be seen to believe-in the value of the learners coming to understand each other in the English lesson and through the medium of English. Most learners want to learn English not only to exchange impersonal information (buy tickets, ask the way, etc.) but also to get to know people. It is essential; therefore, that English is used for that purpose by the learners in the classroom.
We also believe in the value of people getting to know each other and learning to respect and value others whenever it is possible. And clearly language-learning lessons offer the opportunity for this kind of development.
2. The teacher and the class must be convinced that the language used in the caring and sharing activities is relevant to 'real life' situations, i.e. situations out of school where English is used.
3. Learners are more likely to accept caring and sharing activities - this applies to all games, group work, etc. — if they arc introduced to these activities in the early years of foreign-language learning.


Preparation: Prepare the balls of paper. ^:
Procedure: Group work or class work for small classes.
This game is intended for learners who do not know each other very well. It is one of the many games which help people in a group to learn each other's names quickly. Arrange the learners in a circle. (There should not be more than is or 15 in a circle, so more circles if necessary!) Give one learner a tight ball of paper. He/she must then throw it to anyone else in the circle. The learner catching the ball must say his/her own name before throwing the ball to someone else. After everyone has said their name at least twice, you change the rules. Now the thrower must say the name of the person they arc going to throw the ball to.
If the catcher misses the ball or drops it the thrower must retrieve the ball, return to his/her place, and then choose someone else to throw the ball to. And so it continues.
Variation: Group or class work.
You can alter the rules by asking players not to throw the ball to the same person twice or by insisting that the bail is only thrown to someone of the opposite sex.