Mafia in the ESL classroom?

[Torsten]

Hi, have you ever heard of a game called "Mafia" (also known under the variant Werewolf or Village)? It was developed by a Russian psychology student and you can play it with a group of 6 or more people. I was first introduced to it during my last stay in Kiev and I'm now thinking of implementing the game into my English language training sessions. Who of you has ever played that game or even used it in an ESL class?
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TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Jamie (K)]

Never heard of it. Please elucidate.

[Torsten]

Hi think Wikipedia is going to do an excellent job:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(game)
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TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Medeya2012]

Hi all,

hmm very interesting,I wonder why I've never heard about this game hmm.Maybe I know the game, but not its name.
I'm so curious about this game, how do they play it?
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Either nothing is truth, or the truth is unknown to us...

[Torsten]

Well, in addition to the Wikipedia description of the game you might be interested in hear that playing Mafia can be highly entertaining and useful. You can practice your team playing skills, your ability to analyze a situation and draw conclusions, practice your body language and verbal skills and a lot more. We sometimes played it for hours and everyone got so involved and it was hard to stop.
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TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Pamela]

Hi Torsten,
I haven't heard of this game either. But it seems to be quite effective for ESL students. During my teaching practice I used another kind of game aiming at training our memory skills. The group usually consists of at least 20 members where a participant is to name any noun and the others one by one must repeat the nouns mentioned before in sequence and add their own word.In case anyone mixes up the order is the loser. The game proved to be very effective for those who are not at pains to train their memory and not drinking magnesium at all

[Aereal]

Hi Torsten!

We've played this game several times with a dozen of students during the long nights in the bus, heading to the competitions, and the only thing i understood about this game is that it is complete nonsense!
I often identified the mafia members (with my eyes closed and head down) by the rude hand movements and noises they made during "night", and usually managed to convey these data to other members until killed the other night. Sometimes people believed me, sometimes not, but once one of the mobbers was accidentally killed, they all knew i was right.
If it happened that i was a bandit, i was one of the last members to be killed. Actually the game is pretty easy if you know how to play the good guy/bad guy roles. The result we obtained was that mafia never looses, unless players cheat.
maybe we played wrong game?

As for the classroom - the game should probably be very effective, but one has to ensure that all players participate! The entire game may fail if a single mafia "hitman" is silent, only because of his bad English!
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my game is fair play

[Picker]

Hello,nice to meet you~
I am a chinese~I want to know where I can play the mafia game.
In China ,I do not reseach it easy~can you help me? I want to get a page online what it can use the language chats.
help me ~do you want to make friend with me?
I reseach it many days,but I can not...help me~Thank you~
My msn is z2583937@hotmail.com.
I want to play the mafia game in English very much.

[Torsten]

Hi Picker,

Welcome to english-test.net and many thanks for your message. Could you please clarify a few points. Do you mean that you are not allowed to open the Wikipedia page that describes the Mafia game? If so, I can simply paste parts of the descriptions here on the forum for you to read. Or I can explain the game to you one step at a time. If you want to play Mafia, you need at least 5 other players to make sure you will have fun.

Please let me know what you think.
Regards,
Torsten
PS: Your email account might soon start receive a lot of useless spam messages. I recommend you remove the address from the forum.
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Molly]

[Picker]

Dear,Torsten~
I know the mafia game's rule.
In chinese , we can play it on the homepage.The judge is computer,the players are come from each place.And the game link have a time limit.Every player have 1.5 minute to say what you want to say.After 1.5 mintue you can not say any in this day.After all players complete
their speech,every player can Throws a person to leave office.The night have 1 mintue that give the policeman and the chief .
In short, is the pattern which our on-line terminology chats speaks.
But in China the players play it in chinese ,I also play.Now I want to play it in english like this.I find a homepage many days,but I can not.
Please help me find it~thank you~