Games can add to students learning a language. A good game to teach is how to make clear questions. And one road is to teach the 5W's useage by playing a question game. The game that I use to accomplish this is a game were I pick the categories, say: fish, animals, birds and insects. These categories can be located anywhere in the world. Then students have to make sentences and ask questions using not only and not limited to, but certainly including the 5W's. This can usually be accomplished by asking the first few sentences yourself. Questions such as What color is it?; Where does it live?; Is it an animal?; Is it an insect?; Can it swim?; Can it fly?; etc. It is a question game. Questions only. So every question gets a point. The team to guess what it actually is, gets three points. Even this guess must be in question form; Is it a/an ______?. Some practice with a and an is also had.
I usually use a game of Tic-Tac-Toe Toe on an enlarged chalk board drawing for Bingo to keep score. This method of giving points to the teams keeps the scores fairly close. Thus no team gives up because of a low score. Points are given for each question. Then added for each team and when a team accumulates three points, that team can take one space on the drawing. Perfect question sentences are usually not a prerequisites for points. The person asking the question gets a point for his team. And if the sentence is not structured correctly. I repeat it back to the class as it should be. Important point to remember, do not say question sentence structure is incorrect so you don't get a point. This method only takes initiative from students to try asking questions. Try to keep it at a fast pace to keep the students interested. All that is left now is to have a good time, and get everyone involved.
