Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)

English teaching inevitably tends to focus on exchanging facts and information, and tends to overlook ideas and beliefs, nuance and subtlety.

Yet, there's little doubt that we maintain our 'foreigner' status until we can participate in the subtler and more personal aspects of a new language - where we are able to discuss our thoughts, perspectives, imaginings and history. On Q helps people do exactly that.

By playing On Q, certain language requirements will be generated that may not otherwise come up in a typical classroom. Cunningsworth (1984:46) suggests that real fluency in a language is the ability to understand, process and respond to utterances that are not completely predictable. On Q provides such opportunities, and lets you carry out genuine speaking-for-fluency tasks in the TEFL classroom. What is more, the student is given the chance to practice, and sees the need for, language of a more abstract nature. This allows the monitoring teacher to help students acquire more appropriate forms to express such abstract ideas, particularly at the upper intermediate and advanced level.

All the questions have been carefully researched and tested by us in a wide variety of situations. Played as a game, it offers a clear structure and a competitive element to keep even a large group of students interested, talking and listening. For pairs, or small groups, On Q also works well as an informal icebreaker or conversation prompt. It will improve rapport between students as they begin to understand each other better, and students will notice that the conversational skills that they develop by playing the game will also be transferred into their first language, or any other language they may have acquired or are studying.

When we launched On Q last year, our aim was to bring together people from different social, cultural or racial backgrounds, and across different age groups, to participate in reflective conversation. The idea was to encourage people to share their views of the world by sharing snapshots of their past, perspectives on the present and their hopes and fears for the future. Since then we've found that the TEFL classroom is the perfect place to play or use On Q.

It has no specific agenda and no two conversations started with its 70 carefully selected 'prompts' or Q cards are ever the same. The booklet that accompanies the game outlines 10 different ways to play - some co-operative, some competitive. All of them are fun, and the structure that the 'game' implies ensures an interesting and collaborative conversation.

"my students now feel more confident expressing themselves on a wide range of topics. What's more, they really enjoy the interactivity that it encourages, and the resulting fun!"
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