Nugas!

This is a fun listening comprehension, partner activity to do with students as either a post-reading activity or as a review of known material. I learned this as a language lab activity, but it is not necessary to use one. 

For this, you will need sentences from a reading which you have been reviewing or sentences with which you know that students are very familiar - in other words, the sentences need to 100% comprehensible for students to hear aloud! 

Nugas (which is Latin for "nonsense") is a very short guided dialogue/listening activity between two students, where

1. one student is designated as Student A, and the other is Student B.
2. each student has a sheet of paper which has numbered sentences, which are specific for that student, i.e., neither student sees each other's sentences
3. student A will read aloud his/her first sentence to Student B 
4. student B will read aloud his/her sentence which is a response to student A  
5. students A and B will determine whether the dialogue made sense. 
6. If it does, then students will say “Recte!” If not, then students will yell “Nugas!” 
7. Students will continue with next set of sentences. 

Examples:

1) Recte examples

Partner A: ubi est Marcus?

Partner B: puto Marcum esse in Foro.

Partner B: quomodo te habes, Marce?
Partner A: bene me habeo.

2) Nugas example

Partner B: cur Metella in via festinat?

Partner A: mihi placet consumere crustula.

Partner A: Salve, Diana!
Partner B: quod ego sum iratus.

Unfortunately, on your end as the teacher, it takes quite a bit of prep, because you need to come up with a series of  2-sentence dialogues (both recte and nugas) and then to transfer those to both Partner A and Partner B handouts separately. For example, partner A's handout would look like this:

1) Partner A: ubi est Marcus?
    Parnter B: _____________

2) Partner B: _____________
    Partner A: bene me habeo.

Observations

1. This is a great partner, listening activity, but the key point is that the sentences must be 100% comprehensible and not too long.
2. My students LOVE yelling "nugas" when the two sentences do not make sense.
3. This is a fun way to get in practice of "memorized, life skills" sentences (greetings, salutations, textbook dialogues).
4. If you are using a story, this is a way to ask questions about a story and to get in repetitions of the story in a different way.