Mot Pour Mot - An Oral French Vocabulary Game

This is a word game that is a bit like tug-o-war.

Teams take turns giving words to “pull” letters towards their side.

A few years ago we had a monitrice de langue come to our school and she worked with our French classes. That's actually the job I had when I taught in Quebec, except I was the English version.

She taught my class this game called “Mot pour mot”/"word for word" which I believe is a party game. It's been adapted to work in a classroom setting and it has become one of my students' favourite games ever. They cheer when we get to play.

This is a perfect game for awkward minutes, or to get your students talking.

*You can play this game in French or English!

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Game play

Image 1 - This is the set up. Place your letters vertically down the board with lines on each side.

Image 2 - This is mid-play. The teams have started pulling letters back and forth.

Image 3 - This is our end board. Team 1 won this time and got more letters on their side.

SET UP

• Divide into 2 teams

• On the board, draw 6 vertical lines, leaving a few inches of space in between

• Choose a word with no repeating letters

  • Good example: mardi, basket

  • Bad example: kitten (there are 2 ts)

• Between the middle two lines, vertically arrange the letters of your word

• You can use the letter cards with magnets on the back, or you can write the letters with a marker

GAME PLAY

• Teams will take turns giving a word that begins with any of the letters on the board.

  • You'll notice there are no accents on the letter cards, that's because I will accept any word starting with “e”, not specifically “é”, for example.

• If your word was basket, they could give any word that starts with B, A, S, K, E or T.

• Team 1 starts and gives a word, choosing any letter. If they’re correct, move that letter one column towards their side.

• Now it’s Team 2’s turn to give a word. They can choose to pull any letter, even if it’s closer to Team 1’s side.

• Once any letter passes the last line on a team’s side, it’s safe and can no longer be pulled back by the other team.

• The team to get the most letters wins the game

RULES

Teams get one chance to give a word so if one player messes up, another member cannot give another word.

The turn also passes to the other team if a student gives a word that has already been used or if they give a word that does not start with a letter on the board.