Connotation Exercise: Interview and Presentation

By Vanessa Vandergrift , Vanier College

At a Glance

Discipline

Languages

Instructional Level

College & CEGEP

Course

603-101-MA Introduction to College English

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Group
Whole Class

Type of Tasks

Discussing
Gaming & role-playing

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

Google Slides
Smartboard

Class size

Small (20-49)

Time

Single class period (< 90 mins)

Overview

This activity introduces basic concepts of literary analysis and interpretation including the difference between denotation and connotation. It also helps students become comfortable speaking to each other and to the larger class in a low-stakes, fun way. In class, various words are called out, such as love, government and essay. Students position themselves around the classroom along a continuum of positive to negative. Next, students work in pairs and interview their partner. Questions asked include, “If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?” The interviewer then deduces the meaning of their partner’s answer and each pair presents their partner to the class.

This activity is based on strategy of Peer Instruction and Think-Pair-Share and occurs during one class session.

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to:

Explain the concepts of denotation and connotation
Describe a classmate in terms of the connotative meaning of various words they choose

Workflow & Materials

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow

Document

Student Instructions

Vanessa Vandergrift

Document

Presentation

Vanessa Vandergrift

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

Applies content knowledge to self in a direct way
Engages students from the start (class 1) around key concepts in a fun way
Breaks the ice
Shows how many different ways we might interpret the same response

Challenges

Fear of public speaking (if done in a very low-stakes way, students are usually relaxed)
Speech issues (I often include an announcement before we begin where I invite students to speak to me one-on-one if speaking in front of the class is a concern for them)
Pronouns: use they as he/she does not acknowledge nonbinary students; if they is the default, students can be asked which pronoun they prefer; plan for this so that no one is misgendered (this happened once)

Tips

Divide the room with one side negative, the other positive and the middle neutral; when showing different items during slide presentation (i.e. love, government, essay, Shakespeare, etc) and ask students to position themselves along the continuum
- This is a fun way to get them to think about how complex and subjective interpretation is and how this is based on connotative associations
- Movement is always a good idea!
If time allows during presentation, each person can comment on whether their partner’s interpretation was “accurate” or not which can be fun and illuminating
If time allows, alternate interpretations of student responses can be offered by the larger class

Applied Strategies

Peer Instruction & Think-pair-share

Communication, conceptual reasoning and reflection

Feedback Cancel reply

Published: 02/12/2020

Copyright: © 2025 Vandergrift. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication on this website is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.