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Teacher's Notes
Activity type: Role play
Number of students: Minimum of 2
Functions: Stating reservations, making predictions, giving advice
Lexical area: Problems that can arise after a business expands too quickly.
Grammar: present simple, modals
Target phrases:
I doubt if...
I'm afraid that...
I don't know if...
I can't see how...
Yes, but...
Possibly, but...
Sure, but...
It's doubtful that...
Yes, but consider...
Yes, but don't forget...
Yes, but keep in mind...
Yes, but the question really is...
That would be great except...
That's a good idea but...
I don't see any advantage in...
What I'm worried about is...
What I'm afraid of is...
What I'm concerned about is...
What bothers me is...
What I don't like is...
One drawback is...
Essential vocabulary:
Game idea
You work for a company in upper management and some of the decisions that your company has made have resulted in some problems or potential problems. You've hired a consultant to talk about the problems, play devil's advocate and possibly work out some kind of solution.
Playing the game
Students pair off. One of them is the manager and one of them is the consultant.
The manager familiarizes himself with the role card and then not looking at the card presents the problem to the consultant.
The consultant presents his opinion which is critical and a little bit negative. He tells you that what you're doing isn't completely hopeless, but he has strong reservations which he enumerates in detail. He gives you advice and predicts what will happen in the future.
You counter with reasons for doing what you are doing.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you run out of steam or until some compromise is reached.
Game Components
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1. The company you work for manufactures diapers, but it's thinking of expanding into the production of automobiles and recreational vehicles, but everyone says your company doesn't have the necessary marketing experience, after all selling diapers is a lot different from selling automobiles.
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2. Your company produces word processing software, but since the software has been so profitable it's thinking of expanding into news broadcasting and the movie business. A lot of people have been asking why? Most of your employees are skilled programmers and engineers and know nothing about trends and fashions in the entertainment business.
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3. The company you work for started out in life insurance, but went on an acquisitions binge a couple of years ago and bought a wide variety of businesses that don't really fit together including a hotel chain, a large agribusiness specializing in growing corn, a children's clothing company, and a golf club manufacturer.
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4. Your company started out by making a lot of money on a very popular soft drink. It used the spare cash it had on hand to purchase several small fast food chains and family-style restaurants. It managed to make these very profitable also by firing most of the staff and consolidating supply operations.
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5. Your company started out managing prisons for state governments, but found out that thje management skills that they perfected there can be extended to other institutions such as public schools and retirement homes. Your management formula has proven very successful and your stock price has doubled in the last year.
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6. A couple of years ago during the internet stock boom, before the great collapse, your company was flush with cash and started buying up cable companies across the United States hoping that you could secure a monopoly on local access, but municipalities across the country soon started passing local ordinances that you had to supply access to your network to any company that requested it. Not you just don't what to do with your network since you don't have any cash anymore.
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7. Several years you had dreams of conquering the great China market but laws there required that any good sold in the country had to be manufactured there so you bought several manufacturing plants. After China invaded Taiwan and your country allied itself with Taiwan China nationalized all the assets owned by people from your country. The conflict has blown over and you've been trying to get the assets back for years. Should you just abandon this project or is there some hope on the horizon? |
Source: This game is based on ideas in Gambits 2: Conversational Tools by Eric Keller and Sylvia Taber Warner (Canadian Government, 1976). See George Yule, (1998) Explaining English Grammar (Oxford) pp. 85-121 for a discussion of how activities involving advice giving or making predictions are good for practicing modals.
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