What?Where?When? This intellectual TV show has been known to television audience since 1975. This is one of the rare case when a Russian idea for a TV show was later licensed by networks from other countries. This game is designed to give a team of 6 experts – знатоки – 60 seconds to discuss and answer a question sent by one from the home television audience. If the question gets answered correctly, a team earns a point, if not -- an author of the question gets a prize. The question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no, but should presuppose a set of several alternatives, from which one is to be drawn.
Watch this episode with focus on
- Particular lexical items, language structures, and communicative functions through the interactive tasks
- Communication strategies of players to achieve the goal: present an opinion, review the Other’s opinion, paraphrase the information, give input into changing the Other’s opinion, make convincing statement, persuade the team members to establish rapport, synthesize the information through discussion, organize team-building discussion
A version of this game will be perfect for classroom use, as it is the enemy of boredom, and yet invites repetition of target language skills. Questions not requiring special expertise and assumed student high school knowledge are encouraged. The task is to make sure that everyone in the group knows the answer to a question and can explain how the answer was obtained. This game is nonthreatening, promotes repetition in a comfortable, enjoyable environment, ensures friendly competition and meaningful communication that will be retained by the learners. This game is a powerful tool in teaching vocabulary, grammar and more importantly cultural context.