http://en.akinator.com (Photo credit: mazita.)
After spending a whole day playing with my classes on Akinator, I need to share it. We had such a great time, and it was an amazing way to practice our French skills.
For the past month, my students and I have been learning various ways to describe our friends. It’s been fantastic, but I wanted a way that we could get together to actually put them into practice, while reading and speaking. We played “Qui suis-je?” together a few times, and the students had fun doing it, but it could only be played for so many rounds together. That’s when I found Akinator.
Akinator, called “the Web Genius”, is a website where a genie asks various questions to try to guess the person that you are thinking of. I’d say that as long as you answer the questions truthfully, he manages to guess it every time. The only time that we ran into problems was when we weren’t quite sure enough of the answer so we guessed – and then although he tried to recover, he couldn’t always figure out who we were referring to. We did it as a class, which was a lot of fun. They have this website in multiple languages, but to practice for Core French, we used the French site. We had a great time doing it, and the whole class participated with a lot of enthusiasm.
I highly suggest using it to integrate technology and reading into your Core French curriculum. It enabled us to practice the various vocabulary that we had been learning about for the past month in a very practical way, because you had to know how to read the question properly to be able to answer it. Even if it’s just to use as a practice for students, it’s well worth it. They’re always amazed by the outcome, and love to try and trip him up (which doesn’t happen easily, trust me).
And hey! They also have an app for iPhones and iPods, which is always a fun activity to have on there. Watch people in amazement as they try to confuse him.
