KS3 / GCSE / A-LEVEL - Interactive Fun Starter Activity - Spoken Language Key Terms Dominoes

GREAT 10-MINUTE STARTER TO CEMENT THE FOLLOWING KEY TERMS AND THEIR DEFINITIONS:
Accent
Adjacency pairs
Back-channel features
Blend word
Contraction
Deixis / deictics
Dialect
Discourse markers
Elision
Ellipsis
False start
Fillers
Hedge
Idiolect
Interactional talk
Initialism
Jargon
Micropause
Non-fluency features
Overt prestige
Paralinguistic features
Phatic talk
Prosodic features
Received Pronunciation
Repairs
Slang
Sociolect
Standard English
Tag question
Transactional talk
Transcript
Turn taking
Utterance
Vague language

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACTIVITY:
Cut out these dominoes and laminate them (optional). Give individuals or pairs one domino, including you, the teacher.

You begin by reading out the definition on the yellow side of your card. The student who has the term on the blue side of their card that matches with your definition then puts up their hand and says their term out loud. They then read aloud the definition on the yellow side of their card. All class members will have to listen carefully to see if their term matches with the definition they’ve just heard, and so the game continues until it goes full circle, every student has spoken, and you eventually hear the definition that matches with the term on the blue side of your card.

Essentially, you’re playing a large game of dominoes, where students have to match key terms with definitions they hear. Depending on your group’s knowledge/ability, you may work altogether to match up the terms with definitions, or, alternatively, you may decide to play this as an actual dominoes game on the floor.

This is a great 10-minute starter that really helps students to remember key terms and their definitions.