I’ve been teaching English in Japan for nearly 9 years. I’ve used lots of games, but this one is my favorite. I don’t know what you call it in English, in Japanese it’s called “jin-tori”. This is a great game for practicing vocabulary. I’ve used it with adults and children and everyone always has fun. It’s really simple and uses Rock, Paper, Scissors and the only materials you need are cards for the target vocabulary you are practicing. You are probably already using some anyway. You can use cards with words, pictures or phrases, whatever. If I didn’t have any cards, I just took some sheets of letter sized paper and cut them in half horizontally and wrote the words on that. Here’s how to play:

1.    Arrange the cards in a line or kind of a long “U” or semi-circle shape. You can put them on a table, on the floor, or magnetize them and put them on the white board. 12-15 cards are good. I wouldn’t use more than 20.

2.    Have everyone stand up and divide the class into two teams. You can give them team names like “A” and “B”, “Red” and “Blue”, whatever, or let them decide. Have the two teams stand on either side of the floor or board, wherever the cards are. Each team has to stand in line and keep the order.

3.    Have the students repeat after you and practice all the words chorally before starting the game.

4.    The first person from team “A” starts at one end of the cards and starts to read out loud moving down the cards. At the same time, the first person from team “B” starts reading from the other end of the cards. Eventually, they will meet at the same card somewhere in the middle. At that point they have to stop and play Rock, Paper, Scissors. I have my students actually say “Rock, Paper, Scissors, 1,2,3” out loud. The winner continues down the line of cards; the loser has to go back to the end of their team’s line and the second person starts reading from the end again. The process continues; each time two people meet, they have to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. The first team to read all the cards wins.

The game can get pretty energetic and fast. But be sure everyone is saying the words correctly! Sometimes the game can go long if there are too many cards, so be careful. Also, if the teams are too big, not everyone might have a chance to play. After the first team wins, I usually have the teams switch sides so they aren’t always reading from the same end. If you have a really large class, you could have two or more games going on at the same time. Have fun.