11 Fun Gradable and Extreme Adjectives Communication Activities

Teaching extreme adjectives like “wonderful” and “massive” can be one of the best ways of extending students’ vocabulary, but they can need a lot of practice to get used to the grammatical difficulties. This article gives some stimulating ideas. Many of these activities can also be used in the presentation stage.

Good and taboo gradable and extreme adjectives questions

Make a list of a mix of normal and strange “How…?” questions like “How big is your hometown?” and “How big is your home?” These can be used in several different ways:

• students try to only ask the good questions, avoiding the taboo ones
• students rank the questions from 1 point for normal to 5 points for completely taboo, then choose what kinds of questions they want to answer, with no points if they say “I’d rather not say”
• a student asks any question from the list, then flips a coin to see if they can ask that question to someone else (heads) or have to answer it themselves (tails)

The most extreme game

Students try to find things which are more extreme for them than for other people, e.g. something they have like a desk which is “absolutely tiny” while other people’s are only “very small”. This can be done in groups, or as a mingling game where they can sit down when they have compared with everyone else in class and found that their example is the most extreme. If they find that someone else is more extreme, they have to change topic and then can continue mingling.

Gradable and extreme adjectives level hints game

Students secretly choose a gradable and extreme adjective pair, think of something personal related to it, decide what their matching adverb is, ask their partner to guess that level, then give hints about how wrong they are until they get exactly the right adverb + adjective match. For example, one student chooses “difficult/ impossible”, remembers that juggling was “absolutely impossible” for them, asks “How difficult was juggling for me?”, then gives hints like “No, much more difficult” and “No, slightly more difficult” until their partner guesses “absolutely impossible”.

Gradable and extreme adjectives bluffing games

Students pick an adjective and/ or adverb at random and make a related personal statement as quickly as possible, using their imagination if they can’t quickly think of something true. For example, if they pick “mind-numbing”, they can make the true statement “I think Downton Abbey is absolutely mind-numbing” or the made-up statement “Olympic BMX was mind-numbing”. After asking follow-up questions, their partner guesses if the statement was true or false.

This can also work with students telling a whole anecdote linked to the card that they choose.

Gradable and extreme adjectives things in common/ discuss and agree

In small groups, students pick adjectives, adverbs or sentence stems and try to find things that use those words and that are true for everyone in their group. They could then share some of their things in common with the class and see if they are true of anyone else too.

Using gradable and extreme adjectives challenge

In groups of three or four, students choose one thing to talk about and get points for each different adjective and adverb combination they can use to describe it, stopping whenever someone says something the other people agree is untrue. For example, if the topic is a local burger bar, students could get points for “It’s incredibly cheap”, “Its coffee is absolutely boiling” and “It’s fairly noisy”, but stop when someone says “It’s really romantic” and others disagree.

Gradable and extreme adjectives ladder game

Make a table that represents a ladder climbing from a low level to the highest level of adverb + adjective combinations that you are practising, e.g. one with four boxes from “slightly/ not very…” to “absolutely…” Students choose one gradable and extreme adjective pair and ask “How…?” questions to try to get answers that go up the ladder rung by rung. For example, if they choose “expensive/ exorbitant”, they can ask questions like “How expensive is this school?” and “How expensive is the Ritz Hotel?” to try to get the answers “slightly expensive”, “fairly expensive”, “very expensive” and “absolutely exorbitant” in that order. If they get a response that isn’t in the next rung up, they slip back down to the bottom of the ladder and play passes to the next person. However, they can use the same questions again the next time that it is their turn, and they are allowed to copy other people’s questions if they like.

Gradable and extreme adjectives guessing games

Students choose adjectives, adverbs or sentence stems from a worksheet, write true statements with those words, say just the words they added without the words they chose, then see if their partner can guess the missing words. For example, they can choose the word “slightly” and say “Disneyland Paris was BLANK disappointing” for their partner to complete. 

Gradable and extreme adjectives dice games

The six numbers on a dice can be used to match:

1. slightly + gradable adjective
2. fairly/ quite/ somewhat + gradable adjective
3. very/ really + gradable adjective
4. extremely + gradable adjective
5. absolutely/ completely/ totally + extreme adjective
6. free choice

A dice can be used in this way with most of the activities in this article (discuss and agree, bluffing games, etc).

Gradable and extreme adjectives coin games

A coin can decide:

• to use a gradable adjective (heads) or an extreme adjective (tails)
• to use the same words as in the last round (heads) or different words (tails)
• to use more extreme words than in the last round (heads) or less extreme words (tails)
• to say something true (heads) or something false (tails)
• to make a statement (heads) or ask a question (tails)
• to answer the “How + adjective?” question that they made (heads) or answer their own question (tails)

Comparing extremities

Students choose a pair of adjectives and a topic, guess who in their group will be say something higher on the ranking and who will say something lower, then make their true statements to check. For instance, if they choose “funny/ hilarious” and the topic “How funny do you think Mr Bean is?”, they can guess that their partner will say something high like “extremely funny” whereas their own statement will be lower, then see if that is true.