●Contact has been made! Aliens have landed!
●Imagine you are a journalist: What questions would you like to ask the alien?
●Unfortunately the alien doesn’t speak English!
●Fortunately there’s a translator!
Useful as a review activity and/or to practise reported speech.
- Get the students in pairs and have them write 5 or so questions they would want to ask an alien. You could leave it free or you can get them to write questions incorporating language, structures or vocabulary they’ve come across during the term.
- Then one pair comes to the front, one of them is the alien and one the translator.
- The other students, the journalists, take it in turns to ask their questions.
- The translator translates the questions into alien, the alien responds in alien and the translator translates the alien’s answer into English.
- I tend to do it myself first with a volunteer to demonstrate both the activity and that it's fine to look a bit ridiculous.
- Alien and translator can swap halfway through if they want so that both students from each pair get to have a go at each role.
- Repeat for each pair.
A typical interaction should look a bit like this:
Journalist, “What's your first impression of our planet?”
Translator, “Asijfhflskdhflksdjposfdd pp.”
Alien, “Meerg.”
Translator, “He said that it’s a bit dull and to be honest he wishes he had flown past.”
Obviously, the students are putting words in each other's mouths quite literally so I would only do this with a class where the students get on and they can poke fun at each other without taking it too far.