French Literature Top Trumps

Top Trumps is a card game.

The cards contain numerical information.

Players compare data on their cards and if they trump their opponent's number, they win.

The card sets are made by Winning Moves Games and you can make personalised sets on their website (for £15).

Three years ago I made these cards (using Word) for my students studying Maupassant's Boule de Suif:

I gave each character a score based on their kindness, wealth, hypocrisy, and courage.

The players (today, it was my year 12 students) play the game in the traditional Top Trumps way, but with a catch:

Obviously, they had to speak in the target language and they also had to explain why the character on their card had that particular score.

It's a great way to practise speaking and get students to understand and articulate some of the themes dealt with in the story.

And they enjoyed it, too.