Buddies – Reflexive Pronouns Activity

How to use this activity?

This one is meant to be screen-shared or copied and pasted onto a virtual whiteboard. First, screen share the document and let the students look at the picture. You can ask them which of these characters are they in their friend groups. Make sure students understand the personality adjectives.

Then, have a student read one of the boxes out loud to the class. Next, have students answer the question posed by the same box. Ask for justification. Continue like this until all the boxes have been read and questions answered correctly. For the final box at the bottom, it is asking about two friends who start dating. There is no correct answer, so students need only give their opinion and a short justification.

Once the first read-through has taken place, put students into three teams – yellow, green and red. The yellow team will now highlight all the reflexive pronouns in yellow where the usage is “object matches subject” and etc. with the other colors. You could also let all the students complete the activity individually or do it as a group.

During the highlighting activity, students will discover the reflexive pronouns in a context that is relatively simple. If necessary, give them a clue by highlighting one or two with the correct color. There are many examples of reflexive pronouns in the text for each usage.

Finally, make corrections as a class and explain any situations that are unclear for the students. Sometimes “without help” and “alone” can be either confusing, ambiguous or either usage may apply to the situation.

Go further

Put your students in small groups, or even pairs if necessary. Have them each choose, or you can assign, a personality adjective for each individual. It’s better if you branch out instead of reusing those found in the original activity. Have them write their own phrases corresponding to the same questions in the boxes. Do this one box at a time. After each box, students present their phrases to the class along with their “character”. The class must now answer the question.