Putting Your Foot in Your Mouth: Teacher's Notes

Game idea

Sometimes we spontaneously say things that we immediately regret having said because we realize that what we said could be taken as criticism by the person we are talking to. As the idiom says "we put our foot in our mouth" presumably to prevent more of what just came out from coming out.

When you are learning a foreign language you sometimes have to make critical comments and since you probably don't have the experience in the language to make what you're saying polite, you often end up "putting your foot in your mouth."

This activity is meant to give you practice in recovering from comments that you suddenly realize could be taken the wrong way (might have been offensive).

Playing the game

1. Divide the class into groups of 3 to 4.
2. Cut out a set of the cards for each group and put them face down in the middle of the group. (You can have the students create cards as an extension of the activity after you use the cards given if you want.)
3. Have the students in the group each take a turn taking a card, reading it, and restating it as a comment in the first person. Students can change the opinion on the card and use a little bit of imagination if they want.
4. The other students in the group should all give a little disapproving look, as if the comment was directed at them.
5. The speaker should repair the situation by using some of the language above, modal constructions, or something of their own creation.
6. At the end of the activity ask the students if they came up with any ideas of their own about how to repair something offensive that they accidentally said.

Source This game is based on "Correcting Yourself" in Eric Keller and Sylvia Taba Warner (1976) Gambits 2 pp. 23. See the comments of Yule (Explaining English Grammar, 1998, p.117) on the politeness uses of English modals. Take some impolite (in our case unintentionally) and find ways to rephrase it so that it's more polite.

Game Components

• Cards