Guessing The Epithet

Adjectives are often used as epithets in literary language. The more epithets a person knows the better language he or she speaks. We study adjectives in set phrases together with nouns, like 'a wooden table' or 'a square table', as if we don’t care how literary our language is.

1. Ask each student to write down a set of five or so adjective-noun phrases.
2. One of the students starts and tells the others only what the noun is.
3. They then have to guess the entire phrase. For example, if the student gives the noun table, the others might guess its epithet: A shabby table? A dirty table? An orange table?
4. He may need to give hints to facilitate guessing, tell them when they are getting 'warm', and so on.
5. The one who guesses the correct solution gets the next phrase to be guessed.

If you use 'Guessing The Epithet' idea you will not just teach the language, you will teach a good language. Your students will not just express themselves in a language, they will do it beautifully.