Reported

Speech: Whos got my message?

This game provides contextualized and interactive practice with the reported speech of
statements, questions and requests , as used in a real life situation, that of giving
messages. Learners are given the comments of telephone messages and asked to
transform them into full reported speech constructions.

Language output:
A: Have you got any message for me from my lawyer?
B: Yes. She said that your documents were/are ready, and asked/wants you to come and
sign them tomorrow.

or

B: Sorry. Maybe someone else.

Procedures:

1. Before class, cut out one set of sender cards and one set of message cards for each
group.
2. In class, write on the board a few messages similar to those on the cards. Elicit and
model the language as shown in Language Output Note: You may want to stick to the
verb agreement principle or show that this principle is, in fact, overridden by other
factors in speech, e.g.: She said hat your documents are ready rather than were ready.
3. Divide the class into groups and hand out the material.
4. Set the situation by telling the class: The secretaries were absent from work today, so
everybody had to take turns taking down messages for everyone else. However, the
messages got mixed up. Find your messages.
5. Playing the game:
Players shuffle and deal out both sets of cards and check for any sender and message
matches. If there are any, they set them aside.
Players take turns trying to guess who has the message cards that match the sender
cards that they hold. Each player will do that by choosing someone that they think has
the larger message card, and initiating the conversation in Language Output with that
person. If the answer is affirmative, the message is delivered and the player collects the
target message card: otherwise the player only gets a negative answer.
The first player to collect all of his or her message cards wins the game.