Autopsy After the Party

Autopsy After the Party: Teacher's Notes

[Roleplay cards] [Gossip sheet] [Listening] [Back to Main page]

Activity type	Role play, information search
Number of students	There are sixteen cards, so somewhere around 16 students would be ideal. When there are over 16 students, they are going to start to meeting their doppelganger (double) and what would they say then! (when you see one, your death is supposed to be imminent!) The fewer the students you play it with, the more you're going to have to check that the cards that you do use refer to each other so people actually hear some gossip about themselves. Hint: the new people don't know much about anyone. They're mainly just conduits for information.
Functions:	Giving your opinion, saying you have no opinion, avoiding giving an opinion, trying to change someone’s opinion.
Lexical area	Character, talent, abilities, and physical appearance.
Grammar:	adjectives
Target phrases:	I think that... In my opinion... I feel that... I find that... Personally, I believe/think/feel that... I personally believe/feel/think... Not everyone will agree with me, but I believe/think/feel...
Essential vocabulary:	a go-getter, an asset to the firm, bucking for promotion, an upstart, he made a valuable contribution to the project, motivated, always on time/always late, efficient/inefficient, cheerful/grumpy, bad tempered, hopeless at, precise, rigid, inflexible/flexible, a perfectionist, a good showman, a miracle worker, a team player, reliable, organized/disorganized, detail-oriented, careless, good with figures, decisive/indecisive, pompous/unpretentious, down-to-earth, narrow-minded/broad-minded, open-minded, competent/incompetent, miserable, stand-offish, always moaning, always complaining, a whiner, a complainer, has a bad attitude, is a miserable person to be with, a drag to be with, a bore, boooring, has/carries a chip on his shoulder, bears a grudge against..., shy/outgoing, a nice guy, a kind-hearted sort of guy, good-natured, friendly, positive/negative, optimistic/pessimistic, always willing to lend a helping hand, always more than willing to help, a moocher, doesn't carry his share of the load, forgetful/a photographic memory, moody, always seems mixed up, tolerant, absent-minded/sharp, rude, eccentric, a little bit different, lazy/hardworking, back-biting, talking behind your back, name dropping, bragging, always seeking attention, a show-off, stays out of the limelight, in the limelight, a snob, a smart aleck, a smart ass, egotistical, a primma donna, a gourmet, a guru, a gentleman, a loudmouth, a clown, manipulative, a control freak, on a power trip, a slave driver, a halfwit, a nitwit, an ignoramus, a dimwit, a twit, an airhead, a blockhead, a meathead, a hypocrite, a flake, a sissy, a chronic worrier, a nymphomaniac, an intellectual, a flirt, a tease, a womanizer, a creep, a skirt chaser, a ladies man, a yuppy, a member of the nouveau riche, a family man, a good mother, a procrastinator, a clock-watcher, a loafer, a recluse, anti-social, an introvert, a loner, a fanatic, a do-gooder, into causes. (To get examples of these words use the Cambridge International Dictionary of English or the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary.)

Game idea

You’re just out of college and you’re working as an unpaid intern at the Whitehouse making photocopies. You’ve just came back from a party that all the interns went to and you call up some of your friends and talk about the people you met at the party. Fame, money, and popularity occupy all your waking thoughts. You want to make connections with people who are going places, so naturally you want to compare notes with your friends. You call up (walk around the classroom and mix with) as many people as possible Try to win your friends over to your opinions. Don’t tell people what you think of them, but definitely tell people what other people think of them. Most important of all, you want to know what others think of you. If the image other people in the office have of you is bad, ask your friends for suggestions on how to improve your image. You also might want to talk about who would be a useful friend or significant other as you struggle to get ahead in Washington.

Playing the game

Photocopy enough roleplay cards for everyone in the class. Pass them out and explain to the class what the general idea of the game is. Use the "game idea" above. Either photocopy the "game idea" and pass it out or explain it verbally to the class. Have the students copy the names of the interns you're using in the game off the board onto a sheet of paper that they can use to note down what they hear about themselves and other people. The more gossip (facts) they can ferret out of their discussions with other students the better. The students should be told to keep an eye out for conflicting facts or contradictions. At the end of the game you can take an inventory with the whole class of what they found. This is an opportunity to talk about some of the adjectives that describe character that the students encountered during the game.

One way of playing this game is to make it competitive with students sitting down after they've filled their sheets up. I prefer the more relaxed approach where students can ramble on about other things if they want to creating a character or persona as they go along. After all, isn't that what most of us do when we're talking casually over the phone.

Source This game was inspired by Jill Hadfield's "Office politics" in Intermediate Communication Games (Longman, 1990).

Game Components

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