Acquisitions Fever

Acquisitions Fever - 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 (see pp. Yule, 85-121)
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.

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.

Game Components

Role cards

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