Shell in China

This last week in class I was doing an activity called “Who Am I?” I put students into small groups (3-4 students) and they had to think of a person that everyone would know. I told them it could be a classmate, teacher, historical figure, famous singer or actor, etc. Once they had chosen their person, as a group they had to come up with ten sentences to describe him or her. The whole idea was that I would then read the sentences to the class and we would all try to guess who the person was. With that in mind, I would like to share some of the sentences so that you can see what I learned about various people.

Michelle:

*She has beautiful fingers.
*Her oral English is especially good.
*She wears pink clothes.

Thad:

*He often wears jeans.
*He always carries a big school bag.
* His girlfriend is tall and beautiful. (WHAT?!?!?)
*He is boyish.

Various Chinese teachers:

*Her hair is curly like instant noodles.
*He is like a kindly panda.
*He walks like a turtle. (Another group said the same teacher walks like a penguin.)
*He is very lonely. No women like him.

Various students:

*She is a little fat, but beautiful.
*He has lovely lips. All of the girls want to kiss him.
*His is like Mr. White. (When asked about this, it took a bit of prying, but I discovered they meant a knight in shining armor. They didn’t know how to describe this idea in English and went with white because he is always pictured on a white horse!)

I did this activity with each class throughout the week and it turned out to be a hit even if I ended up with information that I didn’t really need to have!