Mot de passe - a word association game for students

This holiday I have discovered a brilliant French TV game show.

It's called Mot de passe.

Mot de passe is a word association game based on the American show, Million Dollar Password and is presented by Patrick Sabatier. It is broadcast daily on France2 at 18:45 and on TV5Monde at 11:00 local time. If you aren't lucky enough to be able to access these channels, there are full episodes here on youtube.

In the game contestants are paired with a "celebrity". One of them is given a "password" which their partner has to guess. They can only give one word clues and are not allowed to use foreign words, hyphenated words, or acronyms but are allowed to use antonyms.

So, for example, if the word to be guessed was "white" the contestant could say "black", or "colour", or "snow". The contestant guessing the "passwords" must guess before the next clue is given. The couple have 30 seconds to guess as many words as they can.

Here is my idea for using it in class:

Students work in pairs. One of them has a list of words e.g. places in a town.

This student will give one word clues to the word.

The partner will have to try to guess.

For example: if the word was "Boulangerie" the first clue might be "pain" or "croissant".

I'd give a minute for the students to do this and then let them change roles.

The winner would be the partner with most words guessed.

A fun way to get students speaking, thinking and using associated words, synonyms and antonyms.