VERBA™

VERBA is the new language learning card game developed by The Pericles Group. The concept is incredibly simple -- one player (acting as a judge) draws a random card containing a fill in the blank sentence in the target language and the other players play a card containing a noun from their hand. The player who has played the sentence card then chooses the best card played and that player scores a point. Play continues with that player as the new judge.

VERBA Overview Video

All VERBA players benefit from seeing high frequency words, with many repetitions, in a context that fosters authentic learning and comprehensible input informed by best practices in second language acquisition. As with all of The Pericles Group's educational games, the play objectives and the learning objectives are one in the same. Players win by making comprehensible sentences, scaffolded by the cards, the images, and the helpful hints included on the sentence cards. We always want to ensure that the learners are seeing correct forms and those forms are continually reinforced by the mechanics.

VERBA: Latin, English (for English Language Learners), Español (Spanish), and Français (French) are available now in the Web Store and if you can't wait, you can download the Print and Play file for all of the full core sets! You'll have to print out the cards and cut them out yourself and they won't be the same high quality production as the professional versions, but at least you'll get to use them right away! All core sets consist of 50 sentence cards and 145 noun cards and are designed for the novice language learner.

Keep an eye out for additional languages and expansions coming soon. Ancient Greek, Chinese, French, and Japanese are in the beginning stages of development.

Standard VERBA Rules

1. Each player draws seven white VERBA cards.
2. The player who most recently celebrated a birthday begins play as the first judge.
3. The judge draws a colored VERBA sentence card and reads the fill-in-the-blank phrase out loud in the target language.
4. The judge then places the colored card on the table for all players to see.
5. Each player (other than the judge) completes the sentence by passing a white card from their hand, face down, to the judge.
6. The judge then shuffles the white cards he or she has received and shares each white card by reading aloud the answer with the colored card in the target language.
7. The judge selects the best response, and whoever submitted that response receives the corresponding colored card. This player places the colored card, face up, in front of him or her.
8. All white cards used in that round are placed in a discard pile. Each player should draw one additional white card so that he or she has seven white cards in their hand.
9. The winner of that round becomes the new judge and the next round begins.
10. The game ends when the players run out of white cards. The player who has the most colored cards in front of him or her at that time is the winner of VERBA.