Shopping Spree: Teacher's Notes

[Main page] [Customer Cards] [Shopping Language] [Listening]
[Rings] [Bracelets] [Necklaces] [Earrings] [Other Jewelry]
.
Activity type Role play, simulation, information search
Number of students Six shoppers/customers and six shops would be ideal since everyone would have a partner to talk to, but really any number is o.k. as long you try to make the same number of shops and customers.
Functions: offering or asking for help, refusing help, asking if the shop has something, responding when the shop doesn’t have something, asking the price, describing the merchandise, making buying suggestions, making a choice, paying, giving change, ordering or reserving something, pickup and delivery of merchandise, leaving the shop (see separate sheet Shopping Language)
Lexical area jewelry, colors, metals, gemstones, clothes, souvenirs (see Selling Language: Describing Merchandise)
Grammar: yes/no questions, how many and how much questions, any/some, to have.
Target phrases: See the separate sheet Selling Language

Game idea

The class is divided evenly into customers and shopkeepers. Each customer is given a description that includes their budget, personality and tastes. They use this description to imagine what they would buy. The merchandise is distributed among the shopkeepers. Their merchandise cards include rings, necklaces, bracelets, and other jewelry. The teacher can add to these by cutting pictures out of magazines or add to the realism of the cards provided by coloring them in with colored pencils or felt tipped markers.

To distribute the merchandise among the shopkeepers, first cut the merchandise cards out of the merchandise card sheets. Make sure that the picture and the description are attached. Fold them over and tape them so the picture is in the front. Then deal out the merchandise amongst the shopkeepers like you would deal out cards in a card game.

The shopper's goal is to buy the things that would go well with his budget, tastes, and personality. The shopkeeper's goal is to make as much money as possible. Each item in their stock/inventory has a price that tells them how much they paid for it. Students should not tell the shopkeepers their budgets and shopkeepers should not tell customers how much they bought things for. (This is the "information gap" that's being bridged in the activity.) Although there are some unique things in each shop, the shops carry a lot of things that look alike, so shopkeepers will have to try to offer better prices than other shops for the run-of-a-mill items. If the shopkeepers can offer interesting descriptions or buying suggestions like what something could be worn with, who it would be a good gift for, or if they are just pleasant, friendly, or flirt (disclaimer: this is not my suggestion, merely an observed fact) with the customer this might help sales.

Do the roleplay twice so that the customers get a chance to be shopkeepers and the shopkeepers customers.

(Note: If some of the male characters seem sexist, my intention is not sexist. I'm just trying to reflect reality. The fact is that women who sell things in stores around the world especially to tourists, whether they come from the same country or another, are subject to the advances of males. One could in fact use this game to train female workers how to deal with harassment from customers if you wished. If you want to use the game with children just eliminate the cards with those annoying males or change them. Everything is written in simple HTML that can be modified in any basic text editor like Notepad in Windows95.)

Source This game was inspired by Jill Hadfield's "Shopping lists" in Elementary Communication Games (Longman, 1984).

Game Components



[Back to the top] 1