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THE AUCTION. A CLASS ACTIVITY           

by  Zafi Mandali 

 

Before doing the auction game, the teacher needs to devote 30 minutes to introduce the rules of the game and relevant vocabulary like bid, auctioneer, hammer, bargain, going, going, gone! The idea is that the auctioneer will try to sell sentences. The point is that the bidders should only buy correct sentences. The activity aims at bringing tricky grammatical or lexical areas to the students’ attention. The auctioneer needs to be a “large”, “crafty”, “quick witted” personality of a student who will greet everyone and introduce himself as the auctioneer of the day and highlight some of his prior  experience in biding. He can name prestigious auction houses he has worked for like Christie’s. He will exhibit his very own  favourite  hammer, the one he uses to cry out  “Going, going, gone!”.