This is a good way to get students speaking at the start of a lesson, since human interest stories are often short but engaging, so there is a natural curiosity among students to find out what actually happened.
Procedure
- Find a selection of short 'human interest' news stories, ideally ones which are curious or amusing in some way.
- Without giving any information at all initially, ask students to ask you yes/no questions to find out what happened in the story. Give some example questions if necessary, e.g. Did it take place in this country? or Is it about a crime?.
- Give some clues to help out where necessary, and continue until the essential details have been uncovered. Then, divide students into pairs and give each student a story of their own.
- Allow a few minutes for them to read their story and ask you about any unknown language. Students then take it in turns to ask each other yes/no questions in order to find out about their partner's story, in the same way as they did with you.
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