Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

Does anyone know how to play Sentence Auction? I got the basic idea from the Idea Cookbook, but now the site is offline, and I just don't get the rules.

I have 10 sentences prepared. I'll give W100,000 to each small group.

My main question is how do you organize the auction part? And how do you determine the game winner?

[deessell]

The winner is the team that has brought the most sentences. Make sure you tell them that if they spend all their money on one sentence they wont win. Also keep an eye on the money, the slack and low level ones usually give it too the better teams.

Also you may need more sentences as they seem to take a while to get into it.

[Ya-ta Boy]

deessell,

How do you organize the auction?

[deessell]

I personally would give them a lot more money than 100,000. Get into pairs and give each pair a sheet of paper with the incorrect sentences. give the students a few minutes to look and correct the sentences.

You need to pre-teach the vocabulary needed. Explain the concept of an auction. Then start the bidding. "Who wants to buy sentence number one?" Sell it too the highest bidder. Collect the money, then ask them to correct the sentence. If it's right they get to own the sentence, if it's wrong start the auction again. Winner is the pair with the most correct sentence. Some teachers use some correct sentences and some incorrect, I always use all incorrect. I use common errors from their own writing.

[baldrick]

I use actual fake money. Last time I photocopied a $100 bill. I split the class into teams and demonstrate the concept of an auction by selling off someones pencil case/piece of chalk etc until they get the idea. I give each team $3000. I give every member of the class a paper with all the sentences on it.

http://esl.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=sentence%20auction&SUName=esl&TopNode=3227&type=1

Then we start the bidding.
During the marking at the end, I MINUS the incorrect sentences from the correct ones for each team. If explained before the auction, this makes the purchase even more important! (e.g. they buy 1 correct sentence and 2 inocrrect ones, their score is -1).

NOTE: Some sentences in the game should be correct!

[deessell]

I use fake money too. I always try and use local currency as it helps them to practise saying the money in English ie, 10,000,20,000.

[sid]

Here's a different way that has worked quite well in my classes (High School/Uni freshmen):

Just print one sheet of sentences. Cut it into strips and put them on your desk. Read sentence 1 out loud to the class, after bidding ends write the name of the winning team on the strip of paper and put it back on your desk. Continue in the same way till all sentences have been sold. Then hand out the correct sentences to the teams that won them (as above two points for each sentence). After that go through the incorrect sentences in turn, read each one to the team who won it and give them 20 seconds or so to fix it. Can't fix: -1point Can fix: 1 point.

[blunder1983]

I made up sentences, and then offered 3 points for buying a right sentence and 2 points if they bought a wrong one but managed to correct it and -1 if they bought an incorrect one and couldn't correct it.

It worked very well, when they bought the sentence they had about 2mins to correct or decide if it was fine.

I used fake american dollars, gave em 20x $20,$10,$5 and $1

[Ya-ta Boy]

Thanks for the input, folks. I think I have the basic idea now and am starting to get some ideas for variations. If anyone else has a different strategy, I'd like to hear it.

We decided to do a silent auction today because it was the first time for us to use the activity, our boys can be rather rambunctious and we haven't worked with them with numbers much.

I wrote a sentence on the board (some of them were correct and some contained mistakes). I also gave each small group a slip of paper with the team number on it. The groups had one minute to decide if the sentence was OK or had a mistake and what to do about the mistake. Then they had to write their bid on the slip of paper.

I collected the slips and wrote the amounts on the board, asking each group how much they bid. High bid won the sentence.

That group then had 10 seconds to get to the board and write either OK or cross out the mistake and write in the correction.

We only did it for 15 minutes today. We may do a thing with numbers for a while tomorrow, then play for 30-35 minutes--and actually let them bid for the sentences.