Speaking Activities › Speak Without
Talk about it without saying the word — a speaking game
Talk about your favourite animal. You may not say the word "animal". One topic, one banned word, and the banned word is always the one you would have opened with. The class shouts BUZZ the moment it slips out — and it usually slips out in the first five words.
What is the banned word game?
It is a speaking game in which a child talks about a given topic for a set time without ever using one specified word. The word is chosen to be the hardest one to avoid — the obvious noun, or a filler like like or so — so the child has to plan a route round it while they are still talking.
How do you run it, step by step?
Show the topic and the banned word together on the board. Give the speaker a moment, then start the timer. Everyone else listens for the word. If it slips out, the turn ends there and the next person goes. Six speakers is a starter, and it gets funnier as the class works out how hard it is.
Why is the opening sentence the dangerous one?
Because the natural way to start is to repeat the topic back — my favourite animal is… — and the banned word is sitting right in it. Almost every speaker who loses, loses in the first five words. Teaching the class to plan their opening sentence before the timer starts changes their success rate completely.
From the classroom
Choosing the banned word is the whole art, and it is worth doing badly once so the class sees why. Ban something too easy and the speaker sails through and it is boring. Ban something too central and they lose in three words and sit down embarrassed. The sweet spot is a word they will need about four times — enough to make them work, not enough to make it impossible. For older classes, the version that actually changes their speech is banning a filler: take away like from a Year 6 class and you will hear, very clearly, how often it was there. Do not turn that into a telling-off. The reason it works is that they discover it themselves, live, in front of people who are laughing with them. And keep the buzz cheerful rather than triumphant — the moment being buzzed feels like a failure rather than a joke, the quieter children stop volunteering.
Which year groups is it for?
It works from Year 2 to Year 9 (US grades 2–8). Younger children do best with a concrete topic and an obvious banned noun. Older children should be given a filler word instead — like, so, just — which is much harder and does real work on how they actually speak.
How is it different from the describing game?
In the describing game the class does not know what the word is, and the point is to make them guess. Here everybody knows the topic; the point is purely the avoidance, and the fun for the audience is watching someone walk towards the banned word and swerve at the last moment.
Can I print it?
Yes — two sheets. The topic cards are numbered cut-outs carrying the topic and its banned word, so groups can play at tables. The before you start sheet has the thing that actually helps: three things you could say that do not need the word.
| Use it for | How | How long |
|---|---|---|
| A speaking starter | Six speakers, class listens for the word | 10 minutes |
| Working on fillers | Ban like, so and just with an older class | 20 minutes |
| Topic revision | Generate cards from the unit you are teaching | 15 minutes |
| Group work at tables | Print the cards, fours, one speaker at a time | 20 minutes |
Do I need an account?
No. The setup screen and the worked example are both open, so you can see exactly what you would be running, and model it to a class, before anyone asks you for anything. Starting the activity uses a free trial token, and a Sage Pro subscription lifts the limit.
Free to try, and no sign-up to look around.
More speaking activities
Try Taboo Talk for the version where the class has to guess the word, or Just a Minute for talking at length with no fillers at all. All seventeen are in Speaking Activities.
Written by a practising primary school teacher, who built Sage Teachers to use in their own classroom. Every activity here is free to try with no sign-up.