Use the technique of this famous board game to play with words, definition... in the English classroom

1. TABOO
or defining in English
José A. Alcalde
Looking for short and simple activities to motivate my students to speak and listen to
English, engage them beyond linguistic aspects and introducing gamification into the
classroom, here enters “Taboo”.
Of course, most people have some time played the world-famous board game Taboo.
However, how about playing it in a foreign language. Certainly, it is demanding. But what
is learnig another language if not a challenge?
Obviously this game is perfect for defining simple words (objects, places, people,
animals, etc.) but don't get confused, the easiest words can mean quite elaborate
“wording” in order to find them out. When we define words, we certainly active a lot of talent in areas like
Vocabulary (searching for words in the same lexical fields, antonyms, synonyms, etc.), grammar (defining
clauses) or techniques like rephrasing.
We can adjust the level of difficulty taking into account our students' competence. We can do this by indicating
how many words the player cannot use (1, 2, 3...) See below for examples.
Picking which words are to be on the cards will depend on several considerations like revision of vocabulary when
a unit is finished, warming-up activities, words we want our students to remember for some particular reason, etc.
Or even better... why not telling the students to create their own Taboo cards? I just did so and they did a
marvellous job (especially when they knew the cards would be used in “enemy” groups!) They proposed quite
more difficult cards than I could have never thought of. All examples below come from them.
How to play it? Well, maybe it is one student defining to the rest to the class or we can divide the class into two
groups and they have to guess the words in the cards against each other or in pairs or... the sky is the limit!!
MOTHER
You cannot use:
woman
DOG
You cannot use:
pet – hair
GYM
You cannot use:
sport – activities- muscles
MONKEY
You cannot use:
banana
SNAKE
You cannot use:
animal – reptile
FOOTBALL
You cannot use:
ball – sport- stadium
ELEPHANT
You cannot use:
animal
SPACESHIP
You cannot use:
transport – planet
NIGHT
You cannot use:
day – sleep- bed

2. CLOWN
You cannot use:
laugh
FIREFIGHTER
You cannot use:
fire - water
RACISM
You cannot use:
hate – black- people
BASKETBALL
You cannot use:
sport
CLOCK
You cannot use:
time – hour
VIDEOGAMES
You cannot use:
console – controller- WiFi
SLEEP
You cannot use:
night
PENCIL
You cannot use:
write- pen-notebook
MATHS
You cannot use:
subject- numbers- school
CAR
You cannot use:
machine
KNIFE
You cannot use:
cut- kitchen
BEACH
You cannot use:
sand- water- surfing
KITCHEN
You cannot use:
food
WAITRESS
You cannot use:
restaurant- food
SING
You cannot use:
music- voice- concert
PLANE
You cannot use:
air
GLASSES
You cannot use:
eyes- vision
EARTHQUAKE
You cannot use:
earth- movement- ground
ONION
You cannot use:
vegetable
KISS
You cannot use:
girlfriend- boyfriend
BALL
You cannot use:
round- play- sports
TEACHER
You cannot use:
school
COMPUTER
You cannot use:
Internet- machine
FLOWERS
You cannot use:
smell- colours- love