Taboo - the game

By Margaret Orleans

A game that my more advanced students like is called Taboo. A vocabulary word is written on a card. The student whose turn it is cannot say the word. Besides the word itself being banned, five common collocates are also banned.

Students then try to get a partner to understand what word they are talking about. (Actually, we play in groups of four--one gives the explanation, one watches the time--they try for as many words as possible in one or two minutes--, a third has a buzzer in case one of the taboo words is used by mistake, at which point the turn ends, and the fourth tries to figure out the target word(s). After playing a couple of round with commercially prepared cards, I get them to prepare their own cards--individually or in small groups.

Then I keep those cards to be played by another class and give them cards prepared by that second class.