Activities For Teens and Adults

 

  75 Activities for Teens & Adults  Adults  Learning English Drills and fluency activities for teachers All levels of levels of EFL and ESL student

 

By: Shelley Ann Vernon

 

Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Printing and Copyright  This book is designed to be easy to use onscreen via via the links from the table of contents and the detailed index. Should you choose to print it, it is written in an ecologica ecologicall font with tiny holes in it to save save ink. PRINTING TIPS

 To use much less ink and and print everything quicker print in colour but always selecting selecting draft or economy ink setting.  To find that option: option: 1. Open the document you want to print 2. Select FILE then PRINT and your printer menu will open. 3. Look for SETTINGS or PREFERENCES and select draft or economy.  The wording may vary depending on your your printer, but this option will be there. SPECIAL FONT

 This is an optional optional step to save more ink every time you print any document.  The books are created created with an ink-saving font with tiny ho holes. les. You save 20% more ink in addition to saving ink using the draft printer setting.  To benefit from this font font you need to install it in you yourr fonts folder. If you are a total beginner with computers you might prefer to skip this step. When you yourself create documents you may use this font and save ink each time you print. Here is an information page on how to download that font, which is free of charge. http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/font.htm It's best to print in sections, such as ten pages at a time, that way if your printer chews up a page you won't be in a total mess! COPYRIGHT

Copyright @ 2009 by Shelley Ann Vernon www.teachingenglishgames.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, computer bulletin board (BBS), Internet, or by any information storage retrieval system, without written permission of the author. I earn my living from my books so I appreciate your integrity on this po point. int. Thank you!

Published by: Shelley Vernon

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Table of Contents A-B

C-D

E-G

H-J

L-M

N-P

Detailed Index Step 1 - Listening Drills Step 2 - Speaking Drills Step 3 - Spelling, Writing Drills and Reading

Q-R

S   T   T  U-Z U-Z   Appendix

p. 7 p. 7 p. 7 p. 8

Step 4 - Listening Games & Activities for Fluency p. 9 Step 5 - Speaking Games & Activities for Fluency p. 9 p. 10 Step 6 - Creative Writing Activities

Introduction Should Teachers Use Games with Adults?  The Gender Question  The Culture Question  Tensions in the Class Classroom room Beginners and Anxious Learners Unpredictable Class Attendance Different Learning Styles Auditory Learners Visual Learners  Tactile and Kinaesthetic L Learners earners

 Teaching Tips Know Your Students' Goals Let Students Know Your Goals For Them Using Drills Using Fluency Activities Accuracy Versus Fluency Story Telling  Textbooks Classroom Discipline Picture or Word Flashcards? What if a Game Flops? Preparation Encourage Your Students and Be Kind

GamAeDay s AIn-BThe Life Alibi Alphabet Alphabet B Alphabet War Anagrams Battleships Bingo Bingo   Down   Blow Your House Down Boggle Brainstorm Buddy Reading Build A Sentence

GamCall es My C-Bluff  D  

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11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 16 16

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18 18 19 19 20 20 20 20 21 21 21 22

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24 24 24 25 25 26 27 28 29 29 30 30

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

 

Definitions   Call My Bluff Definitions Charades  Charades  Cloze Passages Comparatives: Get In Order Counting and Numbers Games for Beginners Beginners:: Guess the Price How Many Match Stick Game Pass the Ball Lottery Lottery   Telling   Creative Story Telling Creative Writing Writing   Project   Creative Writing Diary Project Creative Writing With Adjectives Adjectives   Clues   Cryptic Clues Debates Decision Time Time   Describe the Picture  Picture  Word   Describe the Word Detective Game Game   Dictation Directions on the Board

Games E-G

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32 33 33 33

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34 34 35 35 35 36 36 36 37 37 37 39 39 39 40 41 41

p. 42

Either Or English Trivia

p. 42 p. 42

Figure it Out Fill in Drill Find the Pairs Memory Game Fizz Buzz Forfeits Gap Fill Game Getting to Know You Good Evening Beach Ball Grammar Auction Grammar Drill Grammar Knock Out Guess the Action Guess the Question Guess the Word Word and  and Variation  Variation  Guess Who Listening

p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p.

Games H-K

Hand Sign Stories Hangman   Hangman Variant   Hangman Variant Lower   Higher or Lower Homework   Homework Hot Seat How it's Made Made   Interviews I Took A Trip Trip    Jazz Chants  Jeopardy  Jigsaw Listening Reading    Jigsaw Reading  Joker  Joker    Jokes

 

43 43 44 45 46 46 47 47 47 48 49 50 50 50 51

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52 53 53 53 54 54 55 56 57 57 58 59 59 60 60

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Games L-M

p. 61

Last Card Lego Negotiations 9 Lyrics and Songs Games Libs   Mad Libs Magic Wand Make a Sentence (or a Question) Question)   Making up Stories Stories   Marooned Up   Match Up

p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p.

61 61 62 63 64 64 65 66 66

Match Up Grid Grid   p. 67 Memory Challenge Challenge   p. 67 Mapping   p. 68 Mind Mapping Mine Sweep Sweep   p. 69 Movie Excerpts and Preview Games p. 69 Movi Movie e Game 1 - Guess the t he Dialogue Dial ogues s Movie Game 2 - Role Play the Dialogues Movie Game 3 - Preview Game Movie Game 4 - Work out the Plot Movie Game 5 - Using Previews for Discussion Discussion   Movie Game 6 - Directors and Ticket Buyers Movie Game 7 - Listening For Quotes Movie Game 8 - Match the Title to the Film Movie Game 9 - Watchers and Listeners  Myst My ster ery y Ga Game me p. 72

Games N-P

p. 73

Name the Thing No Yes Or No No   Noughts and Crosses Crosses   Old Maid Pairs Pairs   Parts Of Speech Path Finder Peer Editing Personalisation Personalisation   Persuasion   Persuasion Pictionary Pictionary   Flashcards   Picture Flashcards Inspiration   Picture Inspiration Ping Pong Population Punctuation Presentations Presentations   Perfect  Present Perfect  Solving   Problem Solving Punctuation Pyramid

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Games Q-R Qualities Question and Answer Questionnaires Quiz Quiz Race Radio Readers' Theatre Reading Comprehension Reading Treasure Hunt Relay Race Race   Relay Race Advanced Variant

73 73 73 74 75 75 76 76 76 77 78 78 79 79 80 80 81 81 81

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83 83 84 84 84 85 85 86 86

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Remember and Write Re-Order It Rhyming Challenge Rhyming Ping-Pong Rivet Role Plays  Plays  Round Robin

Games S

       

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88 88 88 89 89 90 92

p. 93

Sentence Play Off 

p. 93

Shopping List Memory Game Show Me Simon Says + Variants Speed Drill Spell and Speak Spelling Challenge Spontaneous Sentence Stop!   Story Dominoes Story Memory Game Story Telling Subject Verb Object

p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p. p.

Games T  Talk About It  Ten Important Sentences with Wa Watermelon termelon  Tests and Exams  Things  Things We Do  Time Bomb  Tongue Twisters  Triangles Talking Point  True or False Question n Practice  True or False Questio  Typhoon

Games U-Z Vocabulary Baseball Vocabulary Picture Hunt Voca Vocabul bulary ary Scav Scavenge engerr Hun Huntt Listening Liste ning Vocabul bulary ary Scav Scavenge engerr Hun Huntt Reading Readi ng Voca Vocabulary Repetition What or Who am I? I?   Which One Has Gone? Word Association Word Chain Word Chain Change One Letter Word Chain Round the Alphabet Word Order Write It Up Writing Relay Zip Zap Vocabulary Revision

93 93 94 95 96 96 96 97 97 98 98 99

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100 100 101 101 102 102 102 104 104 104 104

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106 106 107 107

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107 108 108 108 109 109 109 110 110 111 111

Appendix (& Appendix II as separate download)  Jokes,, Metaphors, Metaphors, Riddles Riddles,, Proverbs  Jokes

p. 112 to 127

Other Resources Resources by  by Shelley Shelley Vernon Vernon p.128 6

 

Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Detailed Index  

 Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Step 1 - Listening Drills Step 2 - Speaking Drills Step 3 - Spelling, Writing Drills and Reading Step 4 - Listening Games and Activities for Fluency Step 5 - Speaking Speakin g Games and Activiti A ctivities es for Fluency Step 6 - Creative Writing Activities Step 1 - Listening Drills Select from these to introduce vocabulary and grammar. Alphabet Beginner: Alphabet Bingo Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any language Cloze Passages Beginner Passages Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Dictation Dictation Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Out Beginner to Advanced: Any language Grammar Knock Out Beginner Stories Beginner to Intermediate: Hand Sign Stories Beginner I ntermediate: New Vocabulary Lower Beginner:  Beginner: Comparatives Higher or Lower Show Me Beginner: Me Beginner: Any language Simon Says and Variants Variants Beginner:  Beginner: Body parts and actions. Challenging version is fun for Intermediates. False Beginner:  Beginner: Vocabulary  True Or False Word Order Beginner Order Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Step 2 Speaking Drills

 Table of Content Contents s / Detailed Index

Select from these to drill new grammar or revise it Life Beginner: Any language A Day In The Life Beginner: B Beginner:  Beginner: Alphabet Alphabet B War Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Alphabet and optional short sentences Alphabet War Battleships Battleships Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate, in small teams Blow Your House Down Beginner Down Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Brainstorm Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Brainstorm  Comparatives: Get In Order Order Beginner:  Beginner: Comparatives Counting Beginner: Counting Beginner: Various counting and number games Cryptic Clues Clues Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: General language Detective Game Beginner I ntermediate: Question practice Game Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Board Beginner: Basic directions Directions on the Board Beginner: English Trivia Trivia Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language, board game Fill In Drill Beginner I ntermediate and possibly Advanced: Any language Drill Beginner to Intermediate Game  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any language Find the Pairs Memory Game Beginner Buzz Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Vocabulary review Fizz Buzz Ball Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: I ntermediate: Easy speaking warm-up Good Evening Beach Ball Grammar Drill Drill Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Action Beginner: Present and/or past continuous Guess the Action Beginner: I ntermediate: Any language Guess the Question Beginner Question Beginner to Intermediate: Hangman Variant Beginner Variant Beginner to Lower Intermediate: I ntermediate: Question Drill I Took A Trip Beginner Trip Beginner to Intermediate: Past tense questions Higher or Lower Lower Beginner:  Beginner: Comparatives  Jeopardy Beginner  Jeopardy Beginner to Advanced: Any language  Joker Beginner  Joker Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Last Card Card Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Negotiations Beginner: Shapes and colours Lego Negotiations Beginner: Make a Sentence or a Question Beginner Question  Beginner to Advanced: Any language Match Up  Up Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any language Grid Beginner:  Beginner: Question practice Match Up Grid Challenge Beginner to Intermediate: Question practice Memory Challenge Beginner

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Sweep Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Mine Sweep No High  High Beginner to Intermediate: Question practice and short form answers No Yes Or No Noughts and Crosses Crosses Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any language Old Maid Maid Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: I ntermediate: Any language Pairs Beginner I ntermediate: Any language Pairs Beginner to Intermediate: Finder Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: I ntermediate: Any language Parts Of Speech Path Finder Personalization Personalization Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: I ntermediate: Any language Picture Flashcards Beginner Flashcards Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any language Pong Beginner to Advanced: Any language Ping Pong Beginner Perfect Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Present Perfect Present Perfect Pyramid Beginner:  Beginner: Any language. Use variation variation 2. Pyramid Answer Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Question and Answer Beginner I ntermediate: Any language Relay Race Beginner Race Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Variant Lower  Lower Intermediate to Advanced: Any language Relay Race Advanced Variant Rivet Beginner Rivet Beginner to Intermediate: Vocabulary review Rhyming Challenge Challenge Lower  Lower Intermediate to Advanced: Any language Rhyming Ping Pong Intermediate Pong  Intermediate to Advanced: Vocabulary Shopping List Memory Game Game  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any language Speed Drill Beginner Drill Beginner to Advanced. Drill any language to encourage faster speaking Subject Verb Object Beginner Object Beginner to Intermediate: I ntermediate: Any language  Things We Do Do  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language  Time Bomb Beginner Bomb Beginner to Intermediate: Any language Question ion Practice Beginner Practice Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Any question forms  True or False Quest  Typhoon  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language and general language practice  Typhoon Vocabulary Baseball Baseball Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate: Any language l anguage Repetition Beginner: Vocabulary Vocabulary Repetition Beginner: Which One Has Gone? Beginner: Gone?  Beginner: Vocabulary Word Association All Association All Intermediate Levels: Vocabulary Word Chain All Chain All Intermediate Levels: Vocabulary Word Chain Change One Letter All Letter  All Intermediate Levels: Vocabulary Word Chain Round the Alphabet Beginner Alphabet Beginner to Intermediate: Vocabulary Zip Zap Vocab Zap Vocab Revision Beginner to Lower Intermediate: I ntermediate: Vocabulary Step 3 Spelling, Writing Drills and Reading

 Table of Contents Contents /  /  Detailed Index

Select from these for spelling, grammar writing practice or reading Anagrams Anagrams Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Spelling Boggle Boggle Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Spelling and Vocabulary Reading Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Reading, pair work Buddy Reading Build A Sentence Sentence Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Reading and Writing Gap Fill Game Game  Beginner to Intermediate: Writing Drill Auction Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Reading sentences to check grammar Grammar Auction Guess the Word and Variant  Variant  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Spelling and Vocabulary Hangman Beginner:  Beginner: Spelling Hangman Reading – All levels  Jigsaw Reading – Editing  – All levels though though best for beginners beginners to intermediate. Mixed abilities. Peer Editing Punctuation Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Reading & Sentence Construction Population Punctuation Punctuation Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced: Reading Punctuation Quiz Race Beginner Race Beginner to Advanced: Reading Theatre Beginner to Intermediate: Reading Readers' Theatre Beginner Reading Treasure Hunt Beginner Hunt Beginner to Intermediate: Scanning for Grammar & Vocabulary Write Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Spelling & Vocabulary Revision Remember and Write  Re-Order It  It Beginner to Advanced: Reading Speak  Beginner to Advanced: Spelling Spell and Speak Spelling Challenge Beginner Challenge Beginner to Advanced: Spelling Stop Beginner Stop Beginner to Intermediate: Writing Vocabulary  Ten Important Sentences Wit With h Watermelon Beginner Watermelon Beginner to Intermediate  Tests and Exams Exams  Beginner to Intermediate Hunt Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Spelling Vocabulary Picture Hunt Vocab ulary Vocabular y Scavenger Scaven ger Hunt Beginner to Intermediate: Skimming reading passages for

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

vocabulary Write It Up Beginner Up Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Writing Drill Relay Beginner to Lower Intermediate: Writing Relay Beginner I ntermediate: Writing Drill Step 4 Listening Fluency

Contents / Detailed Index  Table of Contents

Select from these for listening comprehension Guess Who Listening Intermediate Listening Intermediate Listening Beginner to Intermediate  Jigsaw Listening Beginner 9 Ideas for Lyrics and Songs Activities Songs  Activities for High Beginner to Upper Intermediate Mad Libs Libs Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Review of parts of speech and listening 9 Activities for Movie Excerpts and Previews  Previews  Intermediate to Advanced Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt Listening  Listening  Beginner to Intermediate   Step 5 Speaking Fluency Contents / Detailed Index  Table of Contents Select from these for conversation practice A Day In The Life Intermediate Life Intermediate to Advanced Alibi Beginner to Advanced Battleships Battleships Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced Call My Bluff  Beginner  Beginner to Advanced Charades  Charades (limited) Intermediate Telling Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced Creative Story Telling Debates Intermediate Debates Intermediate to Advanced Time Intermediate Decision Time Intermediate Picture Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate: I ntermediate: Good for prepositions, there is, Describe the Picture there are. Word Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced Describe the Word Either Or Or Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced Getting to Know You I ntermediate Know You Beginner to Intermediate Hot Seat Seat  Intermediate to Advanced Made High  High Beginner to Advanced How It's Made Interviews Lower Intermediate to Advanced Interviews Lower Chants Beginner  Beginner to Advanced: Any language  Jazz Chants  Jeopardy Beginner  Jeopardy Beginner to Advanced: Any language  Jokes Lower  Jokes Lower Intermediate to Advanced Lego Negotiations Intermediate Negotiations Intermediate to Advanced: Negotiating Wand Intermediate to Advanced Magic Wand Intermediate Making Up Stories Beginner Stories Beginner to Advanced Match Up  Up Intermediate to Advanced Memory Challenge Challenge Beginner  Beginner to Lower Intermediate Movie Excerpts and Previews Nine Previews Nine Activities for Intermediate to Advanced Bag Intermediate to Advanced Mystery Bag  Name The Thing Thing  Intermediate to Advanced, all group sizes Parts Of Speech Path Finder Finder High  High Beginner to Advanced: Any language Persuasion  Intermediate to Advanced Persuasion Picture Inspiration Inspiration Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate Presentations  Lower Intermediate to Advanced Presentations Problem Solving Intermediate Solving Intermediate to Advanced Pyramid Intermediate Pyramid Intermediate to Advanced Qualities Qualities Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced Questionnaires  Questionnaires Beginner to Intermediate Quiz Quiz High  High Beginner to Advanced Role Plays Beginner Plays Beginner to Advanced Round Robin Beginner Robin Beginner to Advanced Sentence Play Off  Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced Spontaneous Sentence  Sentence Upper Intermediate to Advanced Story Dominoes Dominoes Lower  Lower Intermediate to Advanced Story Memory Game Game Beginner  Beginner to Intermediate.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Telling Beginner  Beginner to Advanced Story Telling It Lower  Lower Intermediate to Advanced  Talk About It Twisters Beginners  Beginners to Advanced  Tongue Twisters Pointt Intermediate to Advanced  Triangles Talking Poin Vocabulary Baseball Intermediate Baseball Intermediate to Advanced What or Who Am I?  I? Intermediate to Advanced Step 6 Creative Writing

 Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Select from these to practise writing fluency Call My Bluff Definitions  Definitions Beginner to Advanced Creative Writing Beginner Writing Beginner to Advanced Creative Writing Diary Project Beginner Project Beginner to Advanced Adjectives  Beginner to Advanced Creative Writing with Adjectives Beginner Figure It Out Beginner Out Beginner to Advanced Homework Homework All  All levels – Making students responsible for their own learning Songs Beginner to Upper Intermediate Lyrics and Songs Beginner Quiz High  High Beginner to Advanced Quiz Quiz Race Beginner Race Beginner to Advanced Sentence Play Off  Intermediate  Intermediate to Advanced  Things Intermediate to Advanced  Things Intermediate

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Introduction

 

Contents / Detailed Index  Table of Contents

Should Teachers Use Games with Adults?  The Gender Question  The Culture Question  Tensions in the Classroom Classroom Beginners and Anxious Learners Unpredictable Class Attendance Different Learning Styles Auditory Learners Visual Learners  Tactile and Kinaesthetic Kinaesthetic Learners

Games in the language classroom are more than just a fun break from worksheets and textbooks. They are important tools for addressing a variety of problems that can impede yourr studen you students' ts' progre progress ss in learni learning ng a langua language. ge. Gam Games es help help stu studen dents ts relax relax so that that gender gen der,, cultur cultural al barrier barriers s and tensio tensions ns can can be broken broken down. down. The They y pro provid vide e struct structure ured d independence for beginners helping them move through the "silent period". They add flexib fle xibilit ility y to planni planning ng for classe classes s where where attend attendanc ance e is unpred unpredict ictabl able. e. The They y facili facilitat tate e learning in different styles, which maximizes your students' chances for absorbing the language. Games allow you, as the teacher, to have student-to-student practice while still maintaini main taining ng control over the content content of that practice. In short a good supply of games willl make wil make you a more more effect effective ive teacher teacher by a long long sho shott tha thatt the teacher teacher who sticks sticks slavishly to textbooks, worksheets and artificial pair work interactions. Should Teachers Use Games With Teens And Adults?   Table of Contents Contents /  / Detailed Index   Walk Wa lkin ing g in into to a cl clas assr sroo oom m full full of adul adultt Engl Englis ish h la lang ngua uage ge le lear arne ners rs ca can n be far far more more intimidating than facing a class of children. You are there to teach a serious subject, one that may affect your students' careers, hopes for the future and even their ability to

survive in a new country. You may not feel that asking students your own age, and sometimes older, to play games is going to help your teaching or their learning, but in

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

fact you couldn't be more wrong. Games can help you overcome numerous roadblocks that stand between your students and their mastery of English.  The main roadblock you may face, as a teacher who might want to use games in the class cla ssroo room, m, is your your own hesita hesitance nce about about using using this this approa approach ch wit with h adults adults.. Howeve However, r, basically, there is no difference between young and adult learners because we all like to have have fun. fun. Cl Clas asse ses s for for adul adults ts that that co cont ntai ain n game games s ar are e re refr fres eshi hing ng an and d al allo low w ampl ample e opportunity to practice communicating.   Accord Acc ording ing to resear research ch many many adults adults feel feel anxiou anxious s when when lea learni rning ng a foreig foreign n or second second language. Games can help them forget that they are learning and instead enjoy the experience while enhancing their knowledge. The positive emotions make them relax and feel more confident. Adults can learn through games in language teaching just as much as children. They learn from known to unknown. As a Chinese proverb says, " I hear I forget. I see I understand and I do I remember."   The Gender Question 

 Table of Contents Contents /  / Detailed Index

All people learn differently, and there are many factors involved as to why there is so much variation. Gender is an important factor to consider. There is a tendency for women to be more flexible and for men to be more competitive. The idea that women are more 'verbal' and men more 'analytical' is one that is widely accepted. Women are often seen as more contemplative, and men as more active. Games provide a safe, fun outlet for competitive urges and help keep the class from becoming too 'exam centred.' They also create a changeable situation that encourages flexible thinking in all students. Role-play games, re-enactments, and 'murder mysteries' where students have to improvise and play parts outside their every days lives are good examples of this. Students who struggle with test-anxiety often achieve new levels of fluency in these games because the goal is not to get a good score, but to find out "who did it" or to achieve some goal, such as bargaining with other groups for items they need to complete their game-objective.   Most language games combine verbal and analytical elements so that both male and female students can excel at them. Word puzzles, such as Hangman and Rivet, as well as quiz games like Jeopardy, mix language skills with strategic thinking in a way that is fun for everyone. It is not unusual to have teenage boys remain silent all through class, because they feel they are too cool for school, until these games come out. Suddenly, it's all about winning, so they don't mind speaking in English. The girls want to show off as well, and pretty soon you can't keep them quiet! The Culture Question 

 Table of Contents / Contents / Detailed Index

Before including a lot of games in a lesson plan, it is important to consider the cultural background of the students you are working with and the cultural setting of your class. Students in multi-cultural classes in an English speaking country are usually more flexible in the expectations of the class. Start with 'get to know you games' and games that allow your students to examine their preconceptions in a new setting. Riddle contests where students try to stump each other, or where you set the class a riddle to solve, can be a really fun way to do this at the intermediate level, since riddles inherently require players to look at ordinary things from a different point of view. It makes for an interesting cultural lesson if the students translate riddles from their own countries. If you have the students solve their riddles in teams, then this also makes a good icebreaker. Students in mono-cultural classes in their home country will bring a lot of their own cultural expectations into class. Get to know just what these expectations are in regards to adults playing games. If you are new to the country, it's important to ask teachers who have been there for a while, as well as read up on the culture before going. Even if you do all that, be sure to get a run down on individual students from your school administrators or secretaries whenever possible. Adult Japanese students will enjoy all kinds of games from the beginning, partly because organized party games are a big part of their normal

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after-work socializing. If you are teaching in Germany, on the other hand, you may run into resistance at first, since adult game playing tends to be less rambunctious, and language study is seen as a very serious endeavour.    You may need to start out doing mostly role-plays in order to get your students ready to step outside of their daily roles. Build up your classroom as an English culture-zone so that students will begin to expect interactions that are not like their own cultures. Games will be less surprising then. Decorating the walls is always a good way to start, but may not always be possible. Bringing in weekly comics from English speaking papers, English news magazines, and sharing out snacks from home are other good ways to set up your cultural boundaries. Comics especially can lead to some interesting cultural discussions, since many kinds of humour tend to be dependent on cultural norms and expectations. Tensions in the Classroom 

 Table of Contents / Contents / Detailed Index

Sometimes you will be faced with outside tensions coming into your classroom. Including games in your lessons can help you create safe and interesting interactions among your students. Points of tension within a class can come from the mix of cultural backgrounds, current events such as war and immigration, and students with personal difficulties such as learning disabilities. If you have ever had students from Iraq and Brazil in the same class, it's probably easy to imagine the kinds of tension that can come up between male and female students from different countries. In England during the fighting in Bosnia, it was not unusual to have many students from each side of the conflict sharing the same ESL class while recovering from terrible losses. While on the west coast of the United States you can still sometimes come up against bitter feelings about World War II held by Chinese or Korean students towards students from Japan. In these cases, a teacher must constantly balance the need for open-ended practice with creating a comfortable and safe space for learning. Games are a vital tool in maintaining this balance. Games help to break tension among students through highly structured interactions. In very touchy situations, such as with war victims or refugees, you can avoid avoi d games that use personal personal information, information, like get to know you games, because these can end in floods of tears and use made up scenarios instead. It is also best to hold off on role plays that are very open ended, until you feel you know the students well enough to have a good idea of the direction the role-play will take. It is always better to start with more structure and control then you can loosen up as you get a better feel for the class. Scripted Script ed games games that that practi practice ce a partic particula ularr gramma grammarr point, point, like like the verb verb review review game game  Things We Do, where the teacher gives a category and the students come up with sentences using all the associated verbs they can think of, is a good way to start students practicing and working together in a v very ery neutral way. Board games like English Trivia, based bas ed on Trivia Triviall Pursui Pursuits ts are goo good d for review reviewing ing both both lan langua guage ge poi points nts and cultur cultural al information in a fairly neutral format. Crossword puzzles, Find the Pairs Memory Game (also known as Concentration),  Concentration), and Build-a-Sentence can be played with little or only very structured student interaction, while goal oriented role-plays, like shopping games where students are trying to buy a particular set of ingredients, start to get more open ended and allow the teacher to introduce greater freedom for the students while still setting boundaries for the interactions. Beginners and Anxious Learners 

Contents /  / Detailed Index  Table of Contents

One of the most frustrating things for adult learners is "the silent period." This time usuall usu ally y covers covers the first first 33-6 6 months months of langua language ge lea learni rning, ng, dur during ing whi which ch stu studen dents ts are absorbing a new phonetic system, vocabulary, grammar structure and cultural cues. It's completely natural and normal not to speak much at all during this period. After all in infa fant nts s ha have ve well well ov over er a ye year ar wher where e we don' don'tt ex expe pect ct them them to sa say y a thin thing g beyo beyond nd nonsense nons ense babbles. babbles. Adults however however get frustrated. frustrated. Infan Infants ts are developing developing in so many ways wa ys that that we do don' n'tt thin think k abou aboutt thei theirr lack lack of sp spee eech ch,, but but adul adults ts who who ha have ve been been succes suc cessfu sfully lly commu communic nicati ating ng fo forr many many years years in the their ir native native ton tongue gue don't don't apprec appreciat iate e feeling like a toddler linguistically.  

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Enter the ESL teacher with a great selection of games. Games not only address the basic skills that all learners need to master, but they provide students with the chance to communicate successfully in a highly structured or patterned way, with the meaning clearly demonstrated and integrated into the lesson. Repetition without comprehension would not be nearly so effective. Games like Round Robin Advice fit the "silent period" very well, since the students can have their parts of the interactions written out and rehearsed in advance and only have to select select the correc correctt respon response se from from the pre-wr pre-writt itten en choice choices. s. Oth Other er games, games, like like the Grammar Auction, put the focus on a non-linguistic goal – making 'money,' or points, through bidding on grammatically correct sentences – and even quiet students will start calling for your attention, because they aren't worried about what they are saying; they are focused on winning the auction. Games with highly patterned interactions are wonderful for beginners. The game Good Evening Beach Ball not only wakes up your tired businessmen but it takes the pressure off because when they catch the ball, all they have to do is read the phrases their thumbs are pointing to and then throw it to the next person. You'll understand what an impact this class opener can have, when you walk in one day and the student who never says anything without being prompted grins and says, "Good evening" and there's no beach ball in sight!  There are all kinds of vocabulary building games that not only help to review vocabulary in a general way, but create a much more anchored understanding of the meaning of the word. Vocabulary Baseball is great for practising spelling, but it can also be used with definitions and sentence making. Mind Mapping, where the class creates a picture or diagram of related vocabulary is a wonderful cooperative game that not only assists studen stu dents ts in rememb rememberi ering ng new words, words, but also also create creates s associ associati ations ons that that suppo support rt the accurate use of the word. Unpredictable Class Attendance 

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It is common to have unpredictable attendance in adult ESL classes and business classes because work schedules can change suddenly. It is a good idea to always have on hand activities that expand and contract easily for those times when you just don't how many are going to show up for a lesson. After all, it isn't unusual to have anywhere from one student on their own to the full class of 12 (or 18 or 20) when you are doing evening ESL classes. Without some preparation you could run out of things to do or find yourself at loss for how to expand an activity you meant to use with only a few students.   For example, if you have a class of ten and only four show up, you may find the lesson over with very quickly. On the other hand, if all your students attend, and you've gotten used to there only being three or four of them, then you may have change from a small group activity to one that can accommodate all your students.   Paper based games like a treasure hunt based on the text you've been using are easy to put together together quickly. quickly. Just have students students work on skimming for examples of gram grammar mar or facts that will answer a list of questions and award points to the students who finish first with the most correct. Alphabet War is a great card game since it can be played in as many pairs as you need, and the only materials required are index cards and pencils. It expands easily if you have the students make their own decks as part of the activity. Most quiz quiz games scale to any size class class and are great for review. review. When you have have very few students and you want to make it more like a game and less like an interrogation, play a game like Pyramid where the students play against the clock and gets points for how fast they get through each level. Different Learning Styles 

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 You come into class with a lesson on the simple simple present tense, or maybe it's a vocabulary lesson or conversation practice. You follow your textbook and give great examples to illustrate your points and have plenty of practice worksheets – but no matter what you do

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there are always two or three students who just don't get it. What is going wrong? Why aren't you getting through?  The answer may well lie in your students' learning styles. Learning styles have been studied for decades and there are several models that have been proposed by various researchers. While the finer distinctions are still debated, most authorities in the field generally agree upon four basic learning styles: auditory, visual, kinaesthetic, and tactile learners. There is a great deal of overlap between the last two, and they will be treated together here. As a teacher, what do learning styles mean for you? First of all, you need to find your main teaching style. Whether you lecture or do role-plays or worksheets, you need to figure out your own style so that you can supplement it to fit your students' learning styles. Of course, in order to supplement you need materials and activities. You need flexibility and ideally you want to add some fun. That is where the games come in. The variety of games, as well as their integration of different ways of learning makes them the perfect supplements for you your usual teaching style. Auditory Learners 

 Table of Contents / Contents / Detailed Index

Students who get a lot out of lectures, verbal explanations, tapes and oral instruction are generally classed as auditory learners. learners. Games for this type of learner learner are mainly listening listening based. They include games that involve repetition, dictation, and listening for clues. Recitation games – Recitation games are any games that involve students repeating language they have had demonstrated or written down for them. Telephone, Jazz Chants, and Karaoke Karaoke Night Night are good good examples examples of these these kinds kinds of games. games. Karao Karaoke ke Night is an an especially good game in Japan, where most students will be used to the idea of singing for workmates. It's not unusual to have a student ask you for help with preparing a song in English for a business business party. If you are working with adults who are m more ore conservative, use a variation of Jazz Chants with a short rhythmic dialogue and a metronome, or hand clapping, and emphasize the fluency practice. You might also plan a lesson on the history of jazz in the United States. That kind of lesson works very well in classes where students are studying English as a hobby, or for travel. Listening games – EFL Students studying English in their own country often express concern conc ern that they can understand understand their teacher but not other native speake speakers. rs. In the langua lan guage ge classr classroo oom m you can can practi practice ce listen listening ing by usi using ng ta tapes pes or videos videos with short short dialogues for listening games like Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt, which involves trying to locate the necessary vocabulary words on multiple tapes at different listening stations.  There are also Cloze Passages where the students listen to a prepared tape while reading a transcription and filling in any blanks with words they have just heard, and Jigsaw Listening. Jigsaw listening is also an excellent team building game, as the teams send representatives to different listening stations, and then try to reconstruct the story when all the listeners have returned to the team. These kinds of games also help students learn how to make use of TV and radio broadcasts in English to practice on their own. Quiz and story building games – Quiz games like Jeopardy, Grammar Knock Out and listening memory games are great for auditory learners of any level, since you can go from basic questions like spelling and definitions, to more challenging ones like asking for a wor word d to be used used in a senten sentence, ce, explanat explanation ion of gra gramma mmarr rules, rules, or cultur cultural al tri trivia via.. Another set of games that work well for auditory learners are story and sentence building games like Mad Libs, either the store bought variety, or home made, where the students fill fill in words words to make make funny funny and nonsensi nonsensical cal stori stories. es. These types of gam games es requir require e excellent listening skills as the student keeps track of what will be required in the next turn, plus they usually end with a verbal recap of the finished story or sentence allowing students to check their understanding.

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Visual Learners 

 Table of Contents Contents /  / Detailed Index

Visual learners prefer to read silently and make good use of any illustrations that go with the text. They will generally prefer written instructions and will benefit from you acting out situations, watching a demonstration or presenting scenarios in videos. If you have a student who seems to retain what they read better than what they hear then that student is a perfect example of someone who prefers visual learning. There are many games that work with this kind of student, as well as helping non-visual learners make the most of visual cues that can help them with learning and using English. Board games – There are plenty of commercial board games that can be used in the classroom, but you can also make your own. "Folder games" involve making a game boar board, d, of ofte ten n ba base sed d on co comm mmer erci cial al boar boards ds,, and and usin using g them them to prac practi tice ce gram gramma mar, r, vocabulary, phonics, and spelling. The boards can be laminated onto a Manila folder and then the pieces and cards needed for the game stuck in a bag stapled to the inside. Grammatical Chutes and Ladders, Parts of Speech Path Finding (based on the Candy Land Board), and A Day in the Life (based on the game Life) where students participate in minirole-plays generated by the roll of the die and scenario cards are all fun to play. The boards should not be decorated in a childish way, since that will turn off your adult students, but they can still be colourful. Picture games – These games include anything played with pictures as their main starting point. Playing games with picture flashcards, or adapting Jeopardy to use picture prompts is one exampl example. e. Anothe Anotherr one that is a lot of fun with advanc advanced ed stu studen dents ts is picture picture captioning or comic strip re-writes. If you use comics from different countries, you can get into some very sophisticated sophisticated discussions discussions about about what constitutes constitutes humour humour in different different countries. Many students get to a certain level of advanced English, and then plateau. One reason for this is that they have a difficult time taking their English outside of academic or basic survival situations. Studying humour through these visual games can help to bridge that gap. Reading games – Reading is an essential skill for all students and will work especially well with visual learners. Games like Reading Reading Scavenger Scavenger Hunts with colour-coded colour-coded pencils, where the students students look for particular particular parts parts of speech or vocabular vocabulary, y, teac teaches hes skimming as well well as re revi view ewin ing g gram gramma marr and/ and/or or vo voca cabu bula lary ry.. Te Ten n Impo Import rtan antt Sent Senten ence ces s with with Watermelon, where teams send a representative to put sentences in order, helps with summarizing, working under pressure, and team building. The catch to this game is that the representative can only work on the problem for as long as he or she can keep repeat rep eating ing the word word 'water 'watermel melon' on' without without taking taking an extra extra breath breath.. This This game game has the added bonus of fitting tactile learners as well. Tactile and Kinaesthetic Learners 

 Table of Contents / Contents / Detailed Index

 Tactile and Kinaesthetic learners are often the students who just don't get what you're trying to explain in a traditional lecture or worksheet based lesson. Kinaesthetic learners take in information best when they use their whole bodies to complete practice exercises.  Tactile learners l earners are also physical learners, but they are more likely to learn things from model building and hands on instruction. Interestingly, there was a study done in the late 1980s 198 0s (Reid, (Reid, 1987) 1987) that found the self-reported self-reported preference preference amon among g English English Language Language Learners for language lessons was Tactile/Kinaesthetic by a wide margin. This just goes to show how important it is to try and integrate more physical and experiential elements into our English lessons. What makes a game kinaesthetic or tactile? Look for games that involve whole body responses, or have the students touching and moving things around as part of the game activity. Games with these elements are associating physical activity and touch with specific meanings. They can be divided into three broad groups: Touch Games, Spatial Games, and Craft Games.  Touch Games – The most common games involving i nvolving touch are those based around having real items inside a bag, so that students have to touch the items and then perform

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certain tasks. These tasks are what differentiate the level of difficulty. The easiest version simply has students identify the objects that they touch in the bag. This is often a vocabulary game. To make it more difficult, the students have to describe what they are feeling, while the rest of the class tries to guess what it is. Spatiall Gam Spatia Games es – These These games games inv involv olve e rearra rearrangin nging g ite items ms or peo people ple and can be both both kinaesthetic and tactile. They include traditional games like charades and less traditional games, like Population Punctuation, where all but one person in the group has a card with words or punctuation on it and the one person who is 'it' tries to arrange the people at the front of the class so that the cards make a correctly punctuated sentence using as many people as possible. Craft Games – Any game where the students have to actually assemble something, like Lego Negotiations where students have to negotiate with other teams for certain pieces to create their Lego   creature creature according to the directions they've been given. This can be done with home made cardboard Tangrams , Chinese puzzles made of angled pieces of wood, if you don't have access to Legos . Map drawing is another good example, and it can also combine elements of auditory learning since the teacher will tell the students what to draw on their map. Variety Brings Success Games are the single easiest way to address different learning styles in the classroom. By putting students at ease, and stimulating their senses, you create a wealth of learning oppo op port rtun unit itie ies. s. Thes These e oppo opport rtun unit itie ies s ar aren en't 't ju just st for for le lear arni ning ng la lang ngua uage ge,, but but al also so for for broadening the students' learning styles to include those that aren't the first choice. Will paying attention to learning styles solve all your classroom problems? No, of course not. But using games to diversify your teaching style will allow you to reach more of your students more effectively than ever before. It will cut down on boredom as it increases studen stu dentt intere interest, st, and it will will give give studen students ts essent essential ial practi practice ce in int integr egrat ating ing differ different ent learning styles into their own style. Students will be doing more than just expanding their English when they play games. They will be expanding their minds.

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Teaching Tips Know Your Students' Goals Let Students Know Your Goals For Them Using Drills Using Fluency Activities Accuracy Versus Fluency Story Telling  Textbooks Classroom Discipline/ Discipline/ Management Picture or Word Flashcards? What if a Game Flops? Preparation Encourage Your Students and Be Kind  The games and activities in this book will allow you to give your students a better chance of using English during your classes and remembering what they learn. Some games are disguised drills to give students frequent repetition when learning new vocabulary or a new grammati grammatical cal struct structure ure.. Other Other games games are for fluenc fluency y practi practice. ce. There is a mix of games for all the skills although the main skill targeted is speaking. With beginners and lower intermediate students you can use the games here for a greater portion of your class. During the early stages of language learning plenty of drilling provides a solid foundation.  The games allow you to do that in a pleasant way where students have to think about what they are saying rather than repeating things parrot fashion. With intermediate to advanced students there are fluency based ideas and advanced games that you can use.  You can also use the more basic games but much less often and only when you wish to practise a particular grammatical point, either a new one you are introducing, or to go over something where you see your students are making frequent errors. Know Your Students' Goals 

 Table of Contents / Contents / Detailed Index

In your first lesson survey the students and see what is most important to them and what they want to learn. learn. It is highly likely that in most cases you will find that students students want to learn to speak in English as a priority over reading and writing. Many adults will have already studied English in school but still cannot talk freely or even understand much. Probably you will find that students do not want to watch videos, read newspapers and fill in worksh worksheet eets s becaus because e they they have have most most likely likely done that that before before.. In most most cases cases your your students will want to spend most of the class time in speaking practice and engaged in communication activities. That said you may have a class that only need to be able to read or translate work-related documents so it is important to survey your class in the first lesson if not before to find out the motivation, needs and desires of your students. If you have a class of multi national beginners you will not be able to survey them so you will have to get started as you think best. My inclination is always to focus on listening and speaking in class and use reading and writing for homework. Let Studen Stu dents ts Know Your Goals Goa ls For Them

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Most adults have limited time to devote to projects such as learning English and want to feel class time is filled to the brim. Therefore the key point is to make sure that you make the games relevant to the language points and vocabulary you are teaching. It is vital to explain the exact purpose of a game or activity to students before starting. Is it designed to work with a specific grammatical point, is it a fluency activity, and if so, what is the promin pro minent ent type type of tense tense or vocabu vocabular lary y that that will will be pra practi ctised sed if any? any? Is the activity activity designed desig ned to improve improve speaking speaking skills through small talk, describing describing things, things, persu persuading ading people, story telling, asking questions or to encourage creative thinking?

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Using Drills

 

 Table of Contents / Contents / Detailed Index

Beginners and intermediates need plenty of drills. Advanced students can benefit from drills to iron out errors or to briefly drill a new target structure. Use drills when you hear common errors in speaking fluency tasks or in written homework. If a fluency task centres ar arou ound nd a pa part rtic icul ular ar gram gramma mati tica call st stru ruct ctur ure e or tens tense e and and yo you u he hear ar many many er erro rors rs or hesitations with this part of speech stop and do some more drilling to give students a better grip of the language. Drills are controlled speaking exercises that require the students to repeat sentences without mistakes. In order for students to remember grammatical structures and use them during conversation frequent repetition out loud is necessary. Drills provide an opportunity for this instead of students simply copying things down into their notebooks without having a chance to absorb the language internally. Students may understand the language if they hear or read it but they cannot actually use it. Drills can be done at normal pace first to give students a chance to internalise the language. Then you can play some games with speed drills such as Relay Race or Speed Drill. These encourage students to speak faster while drilling in new language. Repetition parrot fashion is the most uninspiring type of teaching so the drills in this book give a more interesting context to drilling by using elements such as team competitions, memory mem ory challeng challenges, es, guessi guessing ng things things or playin playing g som some e kin kind d of gam game e while while using using the required language. Any type of language can be drilled from vocabulary words to short sentences containing questions or statements in any tense. The language being drilled should be new or slightly slightly challenging for the s students tudents but not too complex. If a drill game does does no nott work work it mo most st li like kely ly mean means s that that the the st stud uden ents ts ar are e no nott re read ady y to ha hand ndle le the the language so simplify or play some more listening games in preparation and try again later in the lesson or in the next lesson. Using Fluency Activities 

Contents / Detailed Index  Table of Contents

A Reason to Talk and a Reason to Listen Most students will be prepared to speak about a given topic for the sole purpose of improving fluency. However this can give rise to artificial conversations that run dry soon.  You can improve the quality of the communication by giving other reasons in addition to the basic one of practising English and the activities in this book are designed to do that in va vario rious us ways ways such such as cr crea eati ting ng ti time me limit limits, s, cr crea eati ting ng co comp mpet etit itio ion, n, cr crea eati ting ng an information gap where students have partial information and need to find out the rest, or where students need to persuade others, and so on.   For example rather than having students talk in pairs about their favourite home let half the students be real estate agents and the other half be house buyers. The real estate agents have to convince the house buyers to buy their home and not someone else's. Allow a time frame for conversation and then signal for the house buyers to move to a different agent. House buyers can visit several agents each before making their choice. See which agents made the most sales. This is essentially the same speaking activity but the added twist makes it much more meaningful, so try to incorporate a sense of purpose to the communication for most if not all of your speaking fluency activities. See the game Persuasion for more examples.   Another important point with fluency activities is to make sure that the students have good reason to listen to each other. You might put students in pairs to discuss their favourite holiday destination or latest holiday. The students listening have no motivation to do so other than to be polite really. However if you tell each student to include three untrue facts about their last holiday in their description which the listener has to try to guess by asking questions about the holiday, suddenly the conversation takes on a whole new meaning.  Take care that the level of difficulty suits the class. Students can experience frustration trying to debate topics when they do not have the language to do so.

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Accuracy Versus Fluency

 

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In general there are two types of speaking speaking activity: activity: drills for accuracy accuracy and exercises exercises for fluency. It is most important to ensure that language is correct when doing drills but when doing fluency activities it is vital to let students talk freely without correcting errors.  You can listen in and when you hear a common common error return to a drill to iron it out. Equally you cannot be a perfectionist and insist on everyone saying everything perfectly. The more advanced your students the more errors they are likely to make, this is normal because the more talking they will be doing! As long they can communicate a few errors are neither neither here nor there. there. I may say that plenty of English English people ma make ke errors when when speaking. For example my own sister say things like: "There's hundred of people in the street" instead of "There are hundreds of people in the street", and she is English and educat edu cated ed to post-g post-grad raduat uate e level! level! So give give your your lea learne rners rs a break break and aim for great communication rather than perfect accuracy. Many of the games involve group work. This is to allow students to use the language as much as possible during class time. You cannot listen to everyone all the time so do not try to be a control freak and let students get on with it. Make sure you have properly introduced the target language first, given plenty of listening practice through some of the games in this book, follow this up with some controlled accuracy games, and then release the students to their own devices in small groups. This should improve the overall quality of the language. If you find many errors are being made you know you need to go back one step and practise more in a controlled environment first. Story Telling

 

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We tell stories all the time in life. What we did yesterday, what we are planning to do later, what the movie was like; these are stories of a sort. Practising story telling aids fluency and in addition addition is generally more interesting interesting than dry texts. Stories are dyna dynamic mic living things and your students will be more motivated when talking about their own stories than a distant potentially out of date article in a textbook. While some students may be confident and imaginative you cannot rely on your students to come up with their own stories unaided. Therefore provide something for them to talk about in the form of pictures or words that they assemble into a story of their own creation, or give them the first or last line of a story with some vocabulary words to include along the way. This will force the students into being creative. You can also ask students to talk about things that interest them and to retell familiar stories they know either from films they have seen, books they have read or stories from childhood. Textbooks

 

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Although you do not need to follow a textbook it can be well perceived by many adults. Working through a textbook gives some adults a feeling of making progress, even in the worse cases if that progress only involves the physical turning of the pages! Also it gives you the teacher a ready-made curriculum to work from. Even if your students do not have textbooks you can get one for yourself and use it as a base to plan lessons from and work through as a curriculum. curriculum. You do not need need to follow it slavishly slavishly and absolutely absolutely must in any case supplement it with plenty of games and speaking activities that you have to hand in this book, and that can be applied in most cases to any language or grammar. Textbooks can also be extremely useful for setting homework. Classroom Discipline

 

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Adults are usually highly motivated to learn. They are taking time out to do so and time is precious. precio us. Theref Therefore ore you are unlike unlikely ly to have have any discip disciplin line e proble problems ms in class class unlike unlike teaching children. However if you find the students are chatting to each other instead of listening just stop talking altogether and wait in silence. They will soon realise and stop talking talki ng without you having having to say anything. anything. If students students do not apply themselves themselves in class

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really it is up to them, they are old enough to decide if they want to waste their time or not. The main thing is that they do not distract the others who do want to learn.   If you have a problem with too much chatting try the penalty jar idea. Every time a student tries to conduct an activity in a language other than English, they have to put a ticket in the jar. At the end of the week count up the tickets and the lowest score wins.  The students with the most tickets tickets can have a penalty such as extra ho homework mework or doing a forfeit such as preparing a presentation for the next lesson. It may be that students are chatting because the pace is too slow in class. Make sure you have all your materials ready so you can move seamlessly from one activity to another without delay. Down time can immediately lead to chatting amongst the students and you have to work harder harder to get their attention ag again. ain. Use some activities activities with time limits to increase the student's focus and put them under pressure to finish so that there is no time tim e for chat. If you have multip multiple le nation nationali alitie ties s put the studen students ts speaki speaking ng the sa same me language into different groups. Picture or Word Flashcards?

 

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Many games require picture cards or word cards. Picture cards are best for learning vocabulary, as the students have to remember the word on their own without the help of letters. However with more advanced students using word cards is fine because you will be practising sentences and general speaking rather than simply learning vocabulary by this stage. Word cards are quick to make either on your PC or just ask students to write them out for you at the start of a class. Picture cards need to be collected or bought. Students can also draw them but this is best avoided, as they do not want to spend valuable class time drawing pictures! However if you are short of a picture or two a quick sketch can save the day. What If A Game Flops?

 

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Probably the worst feeling in the world is watching an activity you've selected fall flat with your students. It happens to the best teachers, and how you handle it is what makes the difference between success and failure for the overall lesson. How you handle it will depend on exactly what is going wrong. One possibility is that the students don't understand the language point of the activity. In this case, call a pause and review the grammar point, then start the activity again. Or you may be going too fast for the students and they need more practice before they can successfully perform the activity. Another possibility is that students understand the language point, but don't understand the activity. In this case, step in and guide the students through the activity. If it is a game, guide a few turns, and then let the students work independently.   Finally, it is possible that the point of the activity is not clear. Sometimes, students are less interested in an activity because they think it is unimportant. Pause the activity and give concrete examples of what you are trying to accomplish. This is the best way to get students to cooperate in any game or activity. Preparation

 

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Many teachers spend hours preparing for lessons. So why not ask students to prepare for le less sson ons s as well well!! Fo Forr ex exam ampl ple e to prep prepar are e for for a role role-p -pla lay y wher where e st stud uden ents ts ta take ke on a ch char arac acte terr and and ro role le in a give given n sett settin ing, g, wh why y no nott as ask k st stud uden ents ts to co come me up wit with h their their character for homework and then act the role-plays out in class in small groups. Let students rehearse their role-play in groups and then have one or two groups perform in front of the class. Look under Homework and you will see a list of games where students can prepare for the game for homework instead of the teacher. This takes a huge burden off the teacher and implicates the students more in the task so they are more likely to be interested in it when you you do the full activity in class. class. If you have marked the the homework

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prior to the class keep corrected versions in your materials for use with a different class in the future. In general, prepare thoroughly and if necessary rehearse the lesson as that will make you feel more confident. Test out your ideas on a colleague if you are unsure. Always prepare more than you plan to use and if you have two or three quick vocabulary or grammar games up your sleeve that you can take from this book, you will always have something to fall back on. Keep a list of common errors that your class make and if you have spare time go over them frequently with short grammar games. You can keep this up your sleeve if you have a blank or you don't know what to do in a class because half the students have not turned up, you finish early or you stop an activity because it seems not to be working. At first you will take longer to prepare, but as you implement more and more of the activities in this book your preparation time will be cut right down and your lessons will get better and better. Encourage Your Students and Be Kind to Yourself!

 

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It is normal to feel nervous before your first class, and sometimes before many classes.  There is no point in undermining yourself. Don't listen to the inner voice with all the doubts but to the voice that told you to become a teacher, and remember why you made that choice. As long as your English is better than your students and you have great teaching tools then you can be of service to them. You do not have to understand every aspect of English grammar either, but do have an excellent reference book so that you can look things up and answer questions. Even native English speakers have to look things up in grammar books! After a lesson think about it briefly and learn from what worked and what did not. A lesson is never a failure; it is always a learning experience. If you are enjoying your classes then the likelihood is that so are the students!   Be friendly, enthusiastic, encouraging and smile at your students. It is important that you believe in them and in their capacity to learn. Never demean a student or imply he or she is stupid. People flourish when they feel nurtured and safe. Destructive criticism is a killer and that includes you beating yourself up mentally and worrying about your classes. Most adults feel self-conscious at the idea of speaking a foreign language so in the first lessons be particularly encouraging and gentle on them. Confidence will grow from your reassuring attitude and from the students themselves as they see their ability growing during the lessons.

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Games A-B Use the detailed index to select games. A Day In The Life

 

 Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Category: Speaking Drill or Speaking Fluency Level: All levels Preparation: The first time you use it yes if you create your own board, or no time if you use the example provided in Appendix II. Materials: See Appendix II for two boards and card sets plus one blank set ready to fill in.  This game is based on on the board game 'Game of Life'. Life'. The board can be drawn on the inside of a folder and laminated. The cards and die can be kept in Ziplock bags stapled to the folder.  The example provided is A4 size size which you could print onto card or onto onto paper and then stick it onto a bigger piece of of card. Three boards are provided, one with with adult activities filled in and role-play cards to go with them, one for teens and finally a blank one for you to fill in as best suits your your needs. For example to make it very easy draw pictures that students name or make make a sentence with. To drill specific grammar grammar put all questions in a certain tense, or using target target language. For general fluency use a mixt mixture ure of tenses and scenarios as shown in the examples provided. Materials A folder or card for the board, markers to draw the board and decorate it, buttons or coins as game pieces, a die to roll for the number of moves, thirty index cards. Preparation  This takes 60-90 60-90 minutes, but once it is done, you only have to update the the role-play cards. You will need to make a list of things people do during a normal day, or use the one provided in Appendix II: Get up, brush teeth, go to school/work, have lunch, meet friends, ask a person out on a date, etc. Now connect them to conversations one could have. "You have to get up – tell the person waking you up that you want to sleep another five minutes." The list should be age appropriate for you students. A good way to generate this list is to have a brainstorming session with your class during the class in a previous lesson. Once you have your list, draw a path on the board that has 24 spaces (one for every hour of the day). You can twist it around to take up the space and still leave you with large enough spaces to write descriptions in. Choose three spaces and write "Oh, yeah!" on them, and three to write "Oh, no!" In the other squares, write the conversational situations from your list in the order they would happen during a day. On fifteen index cards, write down "Oh, yeah!" on one side, and various good luck events on the other side, with instructions that would skip the receiver up the board. (Win the lottery – tell the person next to you and then skip ahead three spaces!). On the other fifteen cards, write "Oh, no!" on one side and bad luck events on the other (you've had a car accident, convince the police officer sitting to your left that it wasn't your fault, if he doesn't believe you, go back two spaces).  The best way to get good good and bad events that appeal appeal to your students is to ask e each ach class member to write a few up for homework and use those on the board. For beginners make the "oh yeah" and "oh no" cards very simple such as naming the vocabulary or making a short sentence with the word in and going forward or back a given number of squares that can be indicated on the card with +2 for forward two

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squares or –1 for back back one square. For intermediates and up use sc scenarios enarios as described above to create the need for conversation. How to play Everyone rolls the die and lowest roll goes first. Each player rolls, moves their piece, and follows the instructions of the place they land on. Winner is the first player to make it to the end. Alibi

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Any Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None obligatory but useful for lower intermediates Preparation: Optional descriptions of alibis to give to students – See Appendix II  You say that a crime has been committed and give a description of one of the class members who was spotted at the scene. That person goes out of the room or to a corner with a few other students to establish an alibi, i.e. to discuss where they were and what they were doing at that time. While this is happening the rest of the class are divided into groups and prepare questions to ask the suspect and his or her friends. When a few minutes are up the suspect group divide up, one suspect per group of questioners. Allow two minutes question time only and then the suspects rotate around the class. The class then decide if the person is guilty or not depending on how many discrepancies they find in the details of the alibi given.  This game gets better when re-played and students are able to come up with more questions to snare the suspect. Use it two or three times over a term and make sure different students are chosen for the suspect group. With lower lower intermedia intermediates tes you you might want to provide provide pre-writt pre-written en alibi alibis s and questions questions up on the board, especially the first time you play to help the students. Examples for the suspects are: I was at my friend Dave's house. Then we went for a pizza and met up with friends. I had pepperoni pizza and a coke. Examples for the questioners are: Where were you? What were you doing at the time? Then what did you do? Did you eat anything? What were you wearing? Was Dave's mother there? and so on. Alphabet

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Category: Step 1 Listening Drill - Alphabet Group size: Any Level: Beginner Materials: Letters of the alphabet from scrabble sets or on paper Preparation: None While it may seem logical to start by teaching the alphabet it is more rewarding for studen stu dents ts to start start with with greeti greetings ngs,, nouns nouns and si simpl mple e senten sentences ces,, whi which ch give give them them the impr im pres essi sion on they they ar are e gett gettin ing g some somewh wher ere e fast fast.. The The le lett tter ers s of the the al alph phab abet et ca can n be introduced early, a few letters at a time. How to Play Divide the class into small groups of 2 to 4 per team. Give each group a pile of letters and spell out a word. The students take the relevant letters from the pile and form the word on their table. Let the students work individually, in pairs or small groups, as you prefer.  To start with give out different letter combinations, such as all the consonants and the vowel A and give easy words such as PAT, CAT, FAT, etc. Round two can be a letter combination of all the consonants and the vowel I, for words such as FIT, BIT and PIT. It is OK if the students do not understand all the words they make. The important thing is that they recognise the sounds of the alphabet.

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Materials If you do not have the materials you may ask the students to make their own letters that you can dictate to them, or that they can copy from the board. Alternatively, if you have too big a class, do not use letters at all and let the students write down the letters you say. Using letters on card, card, scrabble letters o orr even better, fridge ma magnet gnet letters helps the kinaesthetic and tactile learners and improves the chances of remembering the letters subsequently. Alphabet B

 

Contents / Detailed Index  Table of Contents

Category: Speaking - Alphabet andsized Vocabulary Group size:Step Best2 with small Drill groups to medium classes divided into teams Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None How to Play  You or a class member spell a word w ord out loud, (do not write it down), such as C, A, T. Each team has 3 seconds to call out the word you spelled, "cat". If the team has not named the word within the 3 seconds the rest of the class is free to call out the word to win a point for their team, if you are keeping score.    To get all the students practising the words have a rule where the whole team must call out the word, as well as the person who guesses it first, within the three-second limit. The quickest students will name the word first but the rest of the team must be listening and ready to chime in with the word before the three seconds are up in order for the team to win its point. Alternatively allow each team member one go at calling out the word. After that a team member may whisper the answer to a team member who has not yet had a turn at calling out the word. For more advanced students use words that are harder to spell with silent letters and difficult spellings. Alphabet War

 

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 This game is based on the traditional card game "War". It provides fun practice of letters, and sounds. Materials 26 index cards for each student; markers, a different colour for each person is ideal. Preparation Print the Alphabet War cards in Appendix II, one set per pair or small group of students. Paper is fine though though card is nicer for for players to manipulate. manipulate. Give each student 26 26 cards and have them write the alphabet out with the marker, one letter per card. How to play 1. Pair up the students, or play in very small groups. 2. Have students shuffle their decks. 3. Students lay down their top cards and compare them. The student with the letter cl clos oses estt to 'A 'A'' wins wins the the matc match h and and take takes s both both ca card rds. s. This This he help lps s st stud uden ents ts to le lear arn n alphabetical order. 3a. Optional Rule In order to take the cards, the winning player has to give the pronunci pronunciation ation of the letter letter and a word that has the letter in it or he/she forfeits the cards to the other player. 4. When the deck has been gone through, each player picks up the cards they have won, shuffles shuf fles them, and starts again. If time is a concern, concern, limit the game to three rounds and the player with the most cards at the end wins.

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Anagrams

 

 Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Category: Spelling Group size: Divide the class into pairs or very small groups Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Class board. Optional use of individual letters such as scrabble sets or letter flashcards. The letters from from Alphabet War (Appendix (Appendix II) could be us used. ed. Preparation: Decide on the words or sentences to be deciphered How to Play Write up words in as a jumble on the Either use are in words, the same family of vocabulary, such food words orboard. professions, or ifwords using that unrelated give a clue with every set of letters. Divide the class into teams and give each team a name, such as a colour. On your signal the players race to make up the words. The first one to decipher each word writes it up on the board with the team name next to it. You may like to suggest that there is no need to work in order; teams can pick any word from the list to decipher. If it is evident that one or two teams are far quicker than the others swap the people around so the talent is evenly spread about the classroom.   A variat variation ion if you have a small small group of studen students ts it is more fun to play play thi this s with real letters lett ers from scrabble scrabble games or letter letter flashcards. flashcards. In that case give each group group a pile of letters. Call out the letters in the word in a jumbled order and give a time limit for the word to be deciphered. The first to work out his or her word writes it up on the board. At this point you spell out the next word to decipher. Another Anot her variation variation is to give each team a big pile of letters containin containing g several several words. On the your board haveeach either pictures clues ortoitform will be difficultfrom to decipher On signal team worksor together all too the words the pile. these words.   Gap fill variation Write up or read out a sentence with a gap. Provide the missing word in jumbled form. For example: Do you _____ (kiel) butter? Answer: like Small group variation Another fun way to play if you have a small group is to give each player or team a buzzer.  The bells you often find on hotel receptions are good for this purpose. Write up the scrambled letters of a word. All players try to figure out the word (give them a clue if necessary), and as soon as a player has the word he or she hits the buzzer to get a point for the team if correct. Do not deduct points for wrong answers so as not to penalise people for trying, but do deduct a point for ringing the bell with no answer ready. If you have only two or three teams, give them each a certain amount of time (15 seconds) to figure out the word, after which it is open to the buzzers of the other teams.  You can rig the game to keep all the teams very close together by giving easier words to a team that is lagging behind, which they are sure to get in the time frame, before the other buzzers can come in and steal the point. Materials Use plastic zip lock bags (like freezer or sandwich bags) to transport sets of letters without losing them. Alternatively dispense altogether with letters and write up the words in a jumble on the board. The students can decipher them with pen and paper. Battleships

 

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Category: Step 2 or 5 - may be used for speaking drills or for fluency Group size: Two people, or two teams. Teams should be three people per team or less Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Grids with 10 10 squares across and and 10 up. Example grids included in Appendix II Preparation: Students prepare the grids for the game in class or before class.

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 This game is based on on a popular American board game called called Battleship. It is very quick to prepare before class, but there needs to be time in class to create the grids as this is part of the vocabulary practice. Purpose 1. Review of previously taught vocabulary 2. Practising descriptions. 3. Works on memory, logic, and strategy Prep time Minimal, all you need is to prepare a 10x10 grid with squares big enough mark clearly, off enoughgrids. copies for each student or team to have two. See Appendix II copies for blankand andrun ready-made  The Props You will need folders folders or something similar to ac actt as screens between players, players, and two grids for each player player or team. Players can use their own own books for screens. In class or pre-class preparation In class, have each player or team take two grids. They will work with their opposing team and fill out all the grids so that they are identical. On the vertical axis of the the grid (the y-axis), have them lis listt the alphabet - A, B, C, D, and so on, or list a letters in random random order, as you prefer. On the horizontal axis ( the the x-axis) list vocabulary categories that you want to review ( animals, food, machines, etc.). Then have the students fill in the grid. For example, looking at the grid, C – Machines might have "car" written in the box. G – Fruit might have "grapes." If students are stuck on a square, for example they cannot think of an item of clothing beginning with the letter 'G' then they can can choose to leave tthat hat square blank. However no one isprevents allowed students subsequently subsequently to put a battleship in a blan blank square. Allowing for blank squares student s not even being able to begin thekgame! gam e! For beginners use the simpler version with letters and and categories. See Appendix II for an example of eac each. h. If students work together to make the grid for homework then the internet is a fantastic tool. For example simply typing in “list of countries” countries” will yield a search result s so o that students may easily easily fill in their grids, rather than spen spending ding ages agonizing o over ver it. Putting students in groups for the creation of grids will help enormously as you pool knowledge and ideas. So there should be no penalty penalty for using the Internet, or dictionaries, a as s long as students know what the word means, or if it is a country, where it is. Once the grids are filled out, each player or team takes two grids, and marks one as MINE (or OURS) and the other as HIS (or HERS or THEIRS) and the screens are set up. Once the screens are up, the players draw their battleships on their grid. The grid for the opponent will not be drawn on until the player starts making guesses.    The ships to may beup placed horizontally horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally. diacovers gonally.three Theyspaces, should two draw the ships take the following spaces: one battleship that that cover two spaces and three that cover one space. Rules of the game  The object of the game game is to find and destroy the oppo opponent's nent's ships. Once ships are drawn, play begins. The first player to go, guesses the location of the opponent's ship, and DESCRIBES the vocabulary item that is in the square (for example saying "something you drive with four wheels" would indicate "car," which is the vocabulary item under C-MACHINES). Beginners playing may may simply name items items or drill basic sentences such such as "I like cars" or "I can drive a ca car" r" and so on. Intermediates upwards can be given specific structures or tenses to drill or the game can be used for speaking fluency. If there is a ship there, the opponent says, "HIT." If the ship is completely hit then it, the opponent must say, "HIT and SUNK." If there is nothing in the square then the opponent says, "MISS." Whatever the opponent says, the player marks the grid labelled HIS/HERS/or THEIRS with the opponent's response.

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If the player scored a hit, they get another turn. If they scored a miss, the turn goes to the opponent. The game carries on until the one player or team has sunk all of the opponent's ships.  Tip Keep the grids and type them up so that you have a supply to use in future, but without the class preparation. preparation. Consider allowing dictionaries, dictionaries, both for the creation of grids a and nd when using grids prepared by other students.  Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Bingo   Category: Step 1 Listening Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner Materials: Bingo sets Preparation: None if students make bingo sets on the spot as described below

How to Play Bingo is a game where the students each have a card with several numbers on it. The teacher calls out the numbers randomly and the student circles numbers on his or her card when they are called. When a student has circled all the numbers he or she says "Bin "Bingo go!" !" and and ha has s fi fini nish shed ed.. Yo You u ca can n play play with with numb number ers, s, with with vo voca cabu bula lary ry and and with with sentences. With any sized class and with no material have each class member write down four numb nu mber ers s be betw een nr has 1 and an 10. 10. Yo You u then thcall, en ra rand ndom omly lyesca call out out all the the numb nunumbers mber ers s 1 are to 10 an and d when whenever ever a twee player playe adnumber you he circles circl it lluntil four circled. Continue until you have a winner or until everyone has finished or anything in between.  This bingo game would obviously work on the numbers 1 to 10, and you can use this same version of the game to practise any sequence of numbers, such as 10, 20, 30, 40 etc. or 100, 200, 300, etc. Use the same method to work with nouns. Write up or show pictures of a selection of nouns and let the students select three or four of these that they either eith er sketch rapidly or write down thus making making a bingo card for the game. game. You can use ready-made bingo cards if you have them but they are not obligatory. Language Ideas Bingo is a good game to use at the early stage of presenting language as it exposes the player pla yers s to freque frequent nt repeti repetitio tion n of new vocabu vocabular lary y or langua language. ge. With With beginn beginners ers limit limit yourself to simply naming the items "car, dress, pool, mansion". You can also be more detailed and specify "red dress, purple dress, green car", or, expose your players to more vocabulary still by being more descriptive, "beautiful red dress, green sports car", and you can also them to grammatical structures such as"How "I wish I had greentocar". Students canexpose ask a question in unison each time such as, are we agoing the beach?" You reply, "We are going by car". As the one making the calls you need a system in place to ensure you call each picture once such as writing all the words on a list and ticking them off as you call them. Form sentences with the chosen word to encourage attentive listening. If you are playing Bingo  with   with all new words then form sentences with structures the class already know, so that that you do not not ha have ve all all ne new w el elem emen ents ts.. Howe Howeve verr if you ar are e us usin ing g Bingo   to revis revise e vocabulary, then introduce a new grammatical structure through Bingo  so   so that the class hear it repeatedly. As a final final point point I have have heard heard of teache teachers rs pla playin ying g bingo bingo with with small small change change.. I do not recommend this as it turns it into a gambling game which conflicts with the beliefs of certain cultures where gambling is seen as a sin. Also there is no reason why the teacher should spend his or her own money in an attempt to bribe the class to be interested. Asking students to chip in could also arouse resentment.

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Blow Your House Down

 

 Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group Size: 2 to 20 students or if you have more they work in groups Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Pictures or word flashcards Preparation: None Students are divided into two teams with a maximum of ten students per team or the game will become boring. If you have more than twenty students let two or more games go on simultaneously. A student comes up to the front and picks a card from the pile. The student then names the vocabulary shown on the card, or makes a sentence or question as required by you. Consider Cons ider giving giving out verbs or other words and not just nouns. If successful successful the student student can draw the first line of a house. Provide a model that can be copied on the board. I suggest a simple house than can be drawn in six strokes. If incorrect the student cannot contribute to the house. Team 2 decide if the sentence is correct. If team 2 are wrong their house is blown down. Repeat with a member from team 2. If a team member makes a mistake mistake the team house is blown down. This can also be a collaborat collaborative ive game where team members members correct their own sentence sentence to save having having the team house blown down.  This is a useful variant as it empowers the whole team team and keeps all students invo involved. lved.  To keep the pace flowing allow the students to come up and turn over their card in advance of their turn so that there is absolutely no delay between students making their sentences. Team B student can be thinking up his or her sentence while team A is already saying or her sentence andaround drawing the house. This willches maximise of time prevent preve nthis students from sitting while someone scrat scratches his orthe heruse head trying tryingand to come up with an answer. It also takes the pressure off the student on the spot, which may be appreciated. If a student does not like being put o on n the spot in this way send tha thatt student up in a pair. For mixed ability classes let the stronger students arbitrate a group, referring to the teacher if in doubt over a particular sentence. Boggle

 

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Category: Spelling Group size: Class work in small groups or individually Level: All levels but better for intermediates and upwards Materials: Class board Preparation: Decide on your boggle grids in advance How to Play Ideally prepare the board in advance by writing up 5 long words in different colours on the board - each word is written up in a grid with the letters jumbled as in the original boggle game.  You may have people working individually or in small groups of 2 to 3. Allow two minutes for the players to write down as many words as they can find in the given letters. When you say, "stop" everyone moves on to the next grid. Allow another two minutes for the next grid and so on until you have done them all. If this is too long for you just do one or two grids.  The groups can swap over their answers. You then take each set of letters in turn and each group gives you its words. Award points as you see fit. For example everyone gets 1 point for a valid word and 3 points if he or she discovers the original word using all the letters. lett ers. Or only award a point to a student if he or she has a word that no one else has. has. Continue through the results taking each set of letters in turn.

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Here is an example of a grid using the word adventure, which is a good word to use as it has several vowels: a u e n t d r v e Answers Answ ers are: tune, dune, rune, reed, den, dent, vent, rent, runt, date date,, rate, tread tread,, dean, teen, never, net, tan, van, deer, dear, read, deed, veer, near, tar, dart, ate, tuna, urn, turn, Ned, Ted, vet, drat, nave, Dave, rave, raved, tat, due, rant, neat, tee, red, ran, run, rat, van, TV, tea, eat and ten... That is fifty-two words and there are doubtless more. Many of these words van, TV, tea, eat and are ten.advanced vocabulary but beginners might find red, ran, run, rat, Here ar Here are e some some ex exam ampl ples es of us usef eful ul word words s to tr try y on yo your ur st stud uden ents ts:: manu manufa fact ctur ure, e, in intr trod oduc ucti tion on,, in inte term rmed edia iate te,, brai brains nsto torm rm,, in inte tell llig igen ence ce,, fabr fabric icat atio ion, n, tr trea eadm dmil illl an and d recommendation. It does not matter if the lett letters ers of the word do not ma make ke a square grid. Brainstorm

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: 2 players up to a class of 30 Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the vocabulary themes you will use How to Play Give playerAllorthe team thirtyinseconds tocall come withas asand many words possible in a giveneach category. players the team outup words when theyasthink of them, in free-for-all style. Designate one student for each team to count up the words while you man the stopwatch. To prevent one student from taking over the whole game have a quota quot a of two words per team member, member, after which a team member member who has used up his or her quota can whisper additional words to a team mate. Once the thirty seconds are up the floor opens to all other teams who have a chance to earn points if they can name any other vocabulary that has not yet been mentioned. You then give the next team a new theme for a thirty second brainstorm. By all means give 15 or 20 seconds if that is more appropriate to the level of your class and always err on the side of not giving enough time to keep up the element of adrenalin and fun. Aside from a vocabulary revision brainstorming activity require instead that participants say sentences. You may like to drill a target structure such as "I should have seen". You can combine this with a vocabulary theme such as famous people, musicians or animals. Rather than justword calling out single words students now call out the designated sentence with a different each time. Categories can include professions, sports, cartoon characters, musicians, famous people, household objects, furniture, body parts, clothing, hobbies, types of transport, musical instruments, animals, types of food, toys, jobs, countries, favourite characters, nouns from nature, nouns from a specific place such as a hospital or school, things you can do at school, things you can do in a hot place, a cold place, at a zoo and so on. An advanced version of Brainstorm is where you give a category AND a letter of the alphabet. alpha bet. So you might might say Animals Animals and B – the class class call out bull, bull, bear, bat, beaver, beaver, badger, badg er, bird, bee, bee, beetle, beetle, bug, billy billy goat! goat! This is much, much, much much harder harder.. Just allow allow thirty thirty seconds for each round or the game may drag. Buddy Reading

 

 Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index

Category: out loud and Listening Group size:Reading Any working in pairs Level: Beginner to Advanced; good for multilevel classrooms

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Materials: Texts to read Preparation: None Buddy reading involves one student reading and the "buddy" helping to make sure that the reader is pronouncing the words correctly. The buddy also asks questions after the reading to check comprehension.  You will need to model this for the group first, but with adults it is of often ten a very easy multilevel activity for them to pick up since it is similar to studying together outside of class. Higher level students are able to monitor lower level students, and interestingly, having level lowerstudents level students monitoring higher level students works tomaking. help the higher become more aware of fossilized errors often that they are Build-A-Sentence

 

Contents / Detailed Index  Table of Contents

Materials Sets of cards are are provided in Appendix II. Use at least four per student; four four boxes, bags, or hats to hold the cards; pen and paper or a chalk/white board. Preparation Play with the set provided in Appendix II, or you may have the students prepare in the lesson les son.. Take Take four cards cards at a time time and write a one word word on each: each: a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb. Do this until you have at least twenty cards, but the more the better. Sort the cards so that all the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are in their own container.  Time to play, 10 – 30 30 minutes, or as long as there is interest. How to Play  This is a cooperative game. Break your class up into teams (ideally of four per team) and give each team its own set of cards. You should play one or two rounds as a class in order to give everyone an idea of ho how w play progresses. Talking is only allowed allowed in English when discussing possible sentences and any team caught using the native language incurs a penalty point. 1. Assign each member of the team a task: recorder (writes the sentence down), timekeeper, reader, and arranger. If there are more team members than jobs, you can rotate the jobs each round. 2. The reader reader pulls one card card from each box box and reads it alou aloud. d. Let' Let's s say the word is "cat". 3. The timekeeper starts the clock, and the team has one minute to think of a sentence with that word in. The students think of of "I have a cat". 4. writes it down. 5. The The recorder group now has three minutes to continue drawing their cards and building up their sentence. Each team member draws one card from any of the boxes in turn.  The reader reads it out and and the team decides where to p put ut it in the sentence, or if they the y can't use it. So for exam example ple the second second word word drawn might might be the ver verb b "see". "see". Students Stud ents think up and write write down the sentence sentence "I see a cat". The third word word drawn is "blue". Students write down "I see see a blue cat". 6. If they can't use a card, it goes on the discard pile. They get a point for every card they use correctly, and lose a point for every card they don't use. 7. A, the, and, but, or, and other prepositions are free words – no points for using them, but they don't need to draw a card for them either. 8. You don't have to keep score unless you are playing teams against each other. 9. Sentences do not have to make perfect sense – sometimes they will be funny and surreal – but they have to be grammatically correct.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Games C-D Call My Bluff

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Beginner to Advanced Group size: Any class size Materials: Optional. Students can prepare descriptions for homework or in class. Preparation: Prepare a description with false elements about yourself to use as a demonstration  Tell students to prepare this for homework. Or if you choose for them to do it in class allow a few minutes for the students to think up what they will say about themselves.  Then have a student stand up and say three things, two true and one fake. The class decide which fact is untrue. Do this a couple of times in front of the whole class and then split the class into small groups to continue the activity. Other topics to use for beginners are what they did at the weekend. Students prepare a description of what they did at the weekend and include three untrue facts. The other students try to guess what these untrue facts are, either by just guessing after they have heard the description, or by asking more questions about the weekend to the student, which is a more advanced activity. Describing anything in the past tense such as a previous holiday or job will elicit the past tense. Describing anything in the future such as what students intend to do after class, or during the next holiday period will practise the future. Describing what they would do if they lived in another country or if they could do anything they liked will work on the conditional and so on. Set your scenario according to the language you wish students to work on. With beginn With beginners ers and lower lower interm intermedi ediate ate studen students ts it is best best if studen students ts pre prepar pare e their their descriptions for homework prior to the class and you mark them. This way students will find the activity easier and there will be more fluent speaking practice taking place.   A variant is for students students to prepare what they really inte intend nd to do at the weekend, weekend, or did lastt weeken las weekend, d, and when they they arrive arrive in class class you give out two or three three alt altern ernati ative ve activities per student that they must slip into their description. The partner or class must find out through through questions what activity is not real. This is best best for lower intermediates intermediates and upwards rather than beginners. Call My Bluff Definitions

 

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Category: Writing, Reading - From simple vocabulary definitions to enriching knowledge of English through metaphors Level: Beginner to Advanced Group size: Any class size Materials: See Metaphors for Metaphors for some examples Preparation: Students prepare definitions for homework Vocabulary version Students prepare three definitions of a word that they look up in the dictionary, two true and one fake. The class listen to the definitions and decide which the true one is. Once students have heard all three definitions have the students all stand at their desks and listen as the definitions are read out again and this time the students sit down if they think a definition is false and stand if they think it true. You can then easily see who has it correct and you can tell those students to award themselves themselves a point if correct. Ideally you can give the preparation task as homework so as not to use class time for the research. Note you may also do two fake answers and one true one for variety, and this is best with beginners too.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Version with Metaphors or Sayings for advanced students Students choose a metaphor or expression and give three definitions of the meaning, two fake and one true. This is an enriching exercise. You have the option of distributing these out to the students, one or two per student, and letting them research the meaning for homework or giving students a free reign to find their own metaphor or expression. Charades

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Fluency (limited scope) Group size: Best with small groups Level: Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Think up some good film and book titles relevant to your students to suggest during the game. For ideas go to a website on films or books. How to Play One person mimes a book, a song or a film title by acting out each word or miming the idea expressed in the whole title. Those watching have to guess the book, song or film. film.  The player miming is not allowed to speak at all and starts by indicating if he or she is miming a book (pretend to hold an open book), a song (pretend to sing), or a film (pretend to hold a movie movie camera). The other players respond respond to the mime by calling ou outt the answer, answer, for exampl example, e, "It "It's 's a fil film" m" or/and or/and "It "It's 's a book". book". The playe playerr miming miming then then specifies how many words are in the title by holding up a number of fingers, and the other players respond, for example, "5 words".    The player miming can either acthold out the title, or the choose to act responds out one ofwith the words, for example he then or she might up 5whole fingers and audience "fi "fifth fth word". word". The actor actor mimes mimes workin working g in a factor factory y unt until il someo someone ne guesse guesses s "facto "factory" ry" correctly. Next he or she might hold up 2 fingers, "second word", and indicate that this is "a little word" by holding their thumb and forefinger close together, as if holding a small object between them. The audience responds with "a, the, it, an" until someone says "and", which is the correct word in this mime. So far we have "and" and "factory". Some frequent charade-player may well have guessed it by now, sometimes hardly has the mime begun. In this case case the book and film is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . Players can also mime syllables Players syllables of words. For example example hold up two fingers for second second word, and then place one finger on your forearm to indicate first syllable. syllable. Then mime making a pot on a wheel to get the first syllable "pot" of the word Potter for a Harry Potter film.. In addition film addition to syllables syllables one can also also mime things things which sound sound like the word. The person perso n miming holds a hand up to his or her hear and the players respond with "sounds "sounds like". One might mime Carry  saying  saying it sounds like Harry to get Harry Potter. Cloze Passages

 

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Category: Step 4 Listening Fluency Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: All group sizes Materials: A reading passage and a gap fill Preparation: None once you have the gap fill done Cloze Passages Passages was given to me by by a teacher. It is an activity where the students listen to a prepared tape while reading a transcription and filling in any blanks with words they have just just heard. If you have no recordings recordings the then n read out a passage passage instead, instead, or have a student stud ent do it. The idea behind behind using using a recording recording is to give your students students ex exposu posure re to other people speaking English. Comparatives Get In Order

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Group size: Best for smaller groups, or split the class Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the themes students will use to put themselves in order Get all the students to stand up and ask them to stand themselves in order to revise comparatives. Example orders include: tallest to shortest, order of Birthdays, oldest to youngest parents, distance they live from class, number of years they have been learning English, number of times they have visited a certain place, number of brothers and sisters, number of jobs they have held, etc. Avoid topics such as personal age, weight, salary and other subjects that many adults prefer not to publicise. In order to have permission to move during the game students must create a sentence with a comparative. For example Jack and Jill establish that Jack lives 5 miles away from the class and Jill lives 10 miles away. In order for Jill to move over in the line Jill must say, "I live further away than Jack" or, "Jack lives nearer to college than I". Now Jack and Jill can swap places. The students standing in line can talk to the person next to them and move themselves one person at a time into the correct final order.  This can be done in small groups with the groups racing each other to finish first. To check the order at the first student in the line says, "I live 3 miles from college", the second says, "I "I live 5 miles from college", college", and so on. on. The class can applaud the group on completion. Counting and Number Games for Beginners Counting: Guess the Price - Step 2 Speaking Drill

 

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Hold up an item for the group to see. Each player writes down a price and the winner is the one who either guesses the price of the item, or gets closest to it. Ask any player for their price. price. You respond respond saying whether the actual price is higher or lower. lower. If it is higher higher all those with lower prices know they have lost. Continue asking players for their prices until the winner is identified. For beginners the prices can be very simple such as 1 dollar, 3 dollars. To work with more complicated numbers price things at 1 dollar 98 cents, or 358 dollars and 43 cents, or 48,585,000 dollars (for a fancy house for example). You can also do this in different cur urre renc ncie ies s to have have th them em bec become ome fa fami mili lia aris rised wit ith h euro euros s, poun pounds ds,, ye yen, n, etc. etc.  You can also divide your class into groups to play this game and elect your best class members as group leaders to hold up the card and ask for the prices. Use any items such as day-to-day household objects, a Vogue dress, a Ferrari, a home, wine or pieces of furniture. Counting: How Many? - Step 2 Speaking Drill

 

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Place a number of items around the room at guessing stations and have all the students circulate freely, guessing how many items there are at each station. You can use things such as: A jar of coins A bag of small objects A see-through bag of biscuits A see-through bag of peanuts A pile of magazines A pile of papers A page full of words A pack of envelopes Give a tight time limit to complete the task to make it interesting. Once all the players have written down their guesses have them divide into two teams of the room.  Team one asks team two a question relating to guessing stationeither 1. Forside example: "How many coins are there in the jar?" A volunteer from team two answers; "There are 30 coins

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in the jar", or "I think there are 30 coins in the jar", or more simply for beginners, "There are 30". If your beginners cannot manage the questions then you can ask the questions and the students can simply say the numbers.    You tell the players whether the number is higher or lower. If the number is higher any player on team two who has a higher number can offer their guess. For example: "There are 55". You tell the players whether the number is higher or lower, and those still in the running give their guess until you get the closest possible guess to the actual number of coins. You write this up on the board under team two.  Team twoare now ask team onenumber "How many there -init the jar?" The players team one who closest to the give coins their are answers is much quicker this on time as only a few players will be in the running to give their best guess. You write up team one's best guess on the board. Now reverse the order and have team two ask team one how many items are at the second guessing station. Go through the process as described above. Continue to note the best guesses of each team until you have gone through all the guessing stations, and then write up the actual number of items at each station, awarding a point to the closest team. If a team gets the number bang on you could give double points. Counting: Match Stick Game - Step 2 Speaking Drill 

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 This is the classic game where a small group of people each have 3 matches or similar items behind their backs. Sitting round in a circle, each player takes between 0 and 3 matches and hides them in their fist. All players hold out one fist in the centre of the circle, objectIfbeing to guess the6,total number matches the round. hands. Each takes the a guess. someone says no one elseofcan say 6ininallthat Asideplayer from numbers this game can also be used with "I think there are", "There are", "I believe there are". Counting: Pass the Ball - Step 2 Speaking Drill, small groups 

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 To learn to count from 0 to 20 students pass a ball round a circle with every one counting in unison. When the players become good at counting have only the player throwing the ball say the number. With more than 15 students pass two or more balls round at once to make it more interesting.  You don't always have to start from 0 if you want to use higher numbers, and this game also works well with the alphabet.  You can also count count in tens: 10 20 30 40 50 etc. Or count up up in in 2s: 49 6 12 8 10 etc. Or count 3s: 2 36 1512 etc. Or count all numbers with a 9 in them: 9 19 29 39 49 59 69 79 89 91 92 93 etc. When the class become good at this, whistle or clap to signal a change in direction so students count down instead. Counting: Lottery – Step

Listening Drill

 

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Ask each student student to write out a 5-digit number on a piec piece e of paper. Divide the class into into two teams. teams. Call out out a five-digit five-digit number for for team one. The pupils pupils listen listen and if they are holding a number that contains all the digits you named they must hold it up and if correct they get a point. point. Then call out out a different 5-digit number for team two. two. The first team to gain two points points wins the lottery. lottery. You could could give the losing team a fun group forfeit. forf eit. The numbers numbers do not have to be in the same order order as those that that you call out. In order to be able to find winners give a restricted range of numbers such as numbers 1 to 30. If you cannot find winners quickly enough range of numbers If students already know 1 to 20 well play withreduce a rangethe such as 389 to 425. you play with.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Creative Story Telling

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any class size divided into groups Materials: None Preparation: Decide which well-known story titles you will use Write up three or four well-known story titles on the board such as Little Red Riding Hood, or a film title such as Grease. Short stories that are not too complicated work best. Make sure that story whatever you is known by your students and if inRiding doubt askd. them tot give you the sto ry titles. titles. Find Finuse d the local local equival equi valent ent of Little Little Red Ridin g Hood. Hoo Nex Next ask a student to recount the gist of one of the stories as briefly as possible. Ask a different student to do the same with the next story and so on. Now divide the class into small groups of 2 to 4 students per group and give them ten minutes to come up with a new version vers ion of the story. Keeping the characters characters and basic elements elements students recreate recreate a diffe ifferrent ent type ype of sto tory ry alt lto oget gether. her. For exam exampl ple e Gr Grea eas se beco becom mes a poli polic ce thriller, thril ler, Goldil Goldilocks ocks becom becomes es a horror horror story, story, Little Little Red Riding Hood becomes a love story and The Emperor's New Clothes becomes an adventure story. Students can add new characters, change the ending and have some creative leeway. At the end students listen to each other's stories and judge them for entertainment value, creativity and fluency of delivery. Creative Writing

 

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Category: Step 6 Creative Writing Level: Group Beginner size: Any to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide which words you will have included in the story Students make up sentences or paragraphs using any language they like as long as certain words you you specify are included. For beginners you can provide simple vocabulary words such as "doctor, "doctor, house, dog, son, and daughter". A beginner might come up with the foll followi owing: ng: I am a docto doctor. r. I live in in a house. house. I love m my y dog. dog. I hav have e a son and and a daughter." daug hter." With complete complete beginners beginners it is recommend recommended ed to stick to families families of related words. You can make make this as simple simple as you need to. Here is another another example to practise directions direc tions and and places: supermark supermarket, et, left, cinema, cinema, right, right, bank, straight straight on. A studen studentt might write: Where is the supermarket please? It is on the the left. Thank you. Where is the cinema? Take the first street on the right after the bank. For more advanced students the possibilities are endless. endless. Students can describe something or make up a story, describe how something works, etc. You can adapt this idea to any area of vocabulary and specify if the story is to be in the past, present or future. Creative Writing Diary Project

 

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Category: Step 6 Creative Writing Level: Beginner to Advanced Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: None  This can be an ongoing project during a term or over several weeks. It is useful for the simple past with beginners but need not not be confined to that. Students keep a diary. This can be very basic for beginners requiring only three sentences per day such as: Today I brushed my teeth. I ate ate eggs for breakfast. breakfast. I walked to class. class. For higher levels you you may say the students pretend to be a character from history, or from the media, they may be a soldier from world war one, or anybody they like, aside from themselves. Students can pick different characters or the same one for comparison.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

After a week or two students can swap their diaries over and have them read out in class. Students then try try to guess guess the author author of the diary. One student is chosen to read out a diary. He or she reads everything that has been written until someone in the class realises real ises who the author author is. The students students listening listening only have one guess guess each so you do not have a situation where one student just calls out everyone's names. Creative Writing With Adjectives

 

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Category: Step 6 Creative Writing or Step 2 Speaking Drill Level: Beginner to Advanced Group size:Pictures Any Materials: of people or scenes Preparation: None For every picture you show, students come up with at least one adjective. Beginners can come up with only one adjective while you may require advanced students to think up five per picture. Pictures can be simple things for the beginners such as a tall person or a fat lady to controversial scenes from history or photos you find in the papers. Students then write a sentence containing the adjective of their choice. You may want to have beginners and lower intermediates working in pairs so they can help each other if lacking in vocabulary.  You may also do this as a speaking exercise. exercise. Show the picture to the class and let people call out adjectiv adjectives es and let others others make up senten sentences. ces. With a large group, group, hand out at leastt one picture to every three stu leas students dents.. Students Students hold up their picture and say the adjective they have thought of and then pass the picture to a colleague who says a different adjective with complete they mayinneed to and repeat the same adjective for (except lack of vocabulary). Asbeginners an option,when put students teams award points for correct or colourful adjectives. Cryptic Clues

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill with Creative Writing Option Group size: Any Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: Written clues and optional use of pictures Preparation: Use the clues in Appendix II, or the riddles, riddles, have students prepare some for homework Spread your clues out around the room. Adapt the clues to the language ability of your group. For example if the item is a television clues could be, "you sit in front of this at home home"" or or,, "You "You watc watch h it it"" or or,, "kno "known wn for for it its s ente entert rtai ainm nmen entt va valu lue" e" or or,, "a tool tool for for communication". If the itemfor is the a watch be, watch "Whatittime it?"you or, cannot "It tellsstop the time" or much more cryptic word clues time, could "you can passisbut it". Players mill about the class looking for the clues and working out the items as they go. Allow a time limit for this project. Then let the class compare answers with each other.  There is no need for you to mark this or check answers. The class can ask you if they have some clues unsolved at the end. If you want to help your class out and make it easier, play as above but also stick up pictures of the items around the room. Give a few minutes time span during which time players read the clues and find the matching items. Creative Writing Option Have the class work in small groups to come up with a series of clues or set this as a homework assignment for another team to guess. Then have a play off and see who has the best clues and who can answer them.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Debates

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any - students work in pairs Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the topics to be discussed  There are many ways you you can carry out a debate in cla class. ss. Here are some ideas: Firstly, choose your subject with care. You may like to ask students in advance what they woul wo uld d more li like ke than to de deba bate te you and andfind this thisinteresting. is a good goodTeenagers idea idea beca becaus use e be the theutterly disc discus ussi sion on will wi in inte tere rest st them what may bored byll the idea of discussing environmental energy sources while you find the topic absorbing! However steer clear of "red hot" topics such as abortion, different religious creeds and current politics. These topics usually arouse hostility and it is likely that a few students who feel strongly about the issue will take over rather than letting everyone have a chance to speak. Include daft topics to add some humour such as: Martians should take over our postal services. Examples of topics are: life was better twenty years years ago than it is now. now. The church plays a key role in society today. Man will destroy his earth. Teaching is the most important prof profes essi sion on th ther ere e is. is. Pu Publ blic ic tran transp spor ortt is bett better er th than an ev ever ery y one one owni owning ng priv privat ate e vehicles. Living in the city is better than living in the country. Marriage is an outdated institutio insti tution n and serves serves no purpose. For teenagers, teenagers, Parents Parents know more about life than teenagers and teenagers should listen to them, or, teenagers should not have to go to school but should be allowed to start work at aged 14. 1. Put the students in pairs and write a statement on the bo board ard for them to debate. One student takes one side of the argument while the other argues against him or her. One side must argue for their topic regardless of personal opinions while the other side must argue arg ue agains against. t. This This preven prevents ts studen students ts from from becomi becoming ng too heated heated and allow allows s for for a student to role-play rather than express personal views. Rotate the students to give the students the opportunity to present their arguments again to a fresh person and they should notice that they become more and more fluent. 2. Put the topic up on the board and tell the class to get into small groups and discuss the topic briefly between themselves with a view to making up their minds rapidly which side of the argument they will take. Next send all those in favour to one side of the room and all those against to the other. Again in small groups tell the students to get together and quickly come up with as many points to argue with. Count up how many students are for and against and put this on the board. Explain that there will be a debate and the aim is to win people over to your side. Next put students in pairs or very small groups made up of a mix of students from each side of the argument and allow them to discuss discuss the issue together and take a vote on it at the end. Count up the votes in favour or and against at the end to see what the class overall opinion is and see how many people changed sides as a result of the discussion, if any. 3. Divide students into an even number of groups, such as eight groups of students made of up two or three people per group. Give each pair of groups a different topic to discuss.  These can be light-hearted topics or serious ones. Preferably ask students for topics they find interesting and use those. One group has the topic that cities are bad places to live and must agree with the statement while the other group have the same topic and must disagree with it. Allow 5 minutes for the group to discuss their topic and to work out their argument. Now put the groups opposite each other. Group one argues for their topic and the group opposite must disagree with whatever is said, regardless of what students really think, and say why.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Decision Time

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency - What would you do? Level: Intermediate Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: Decide on topics students will decide on Give the students students a scenario scenario and ask them what they would would do. Ideas are crimes crimes and punishments, security illegal entering church in shorts, etc. social Choose topics and that taxation, are suitable for for immigrants, your culture someone that w will ill not offendabut th that at are sufficiently interesting. After doing this once ask students to prepare “what would you do?” scenarios for homework and use those in class. Students Stud ents circulate circulate in class class asking asking the others what they would do and grouping grouping together with studen with students ts who think the same way. way. At the end you will will have have severa severall groups groups of students of like minds. The aim for students is to collect as many people as possible together in their group. The biggest group wins. Describe The Picture

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency - There is, there are, prepositions, present continuous Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Group size: Any Materials: Pictures Preparation: Find three three suitable pictures. pictures. Demonstration picture picture provided in Appendix II. Students work in pairs or small groups. One student describes a picture without showing it to the other student or small group. The other students listen and try to draw the pictur pic ture. e. Pictur Pictures es with with family family groups groups in the home are useful useful for for beginn beginners ers for for family family members, rooms of the house and household objects. You are likely to find suitable pictures in your textbook if you use one. If not try a shopping catalogue or magazine for pictures. You can also set the task of finding a good picture to describe for homework.  You need one picture to use for the demonstration and then two different pictures for the pair work. Either distribute the same two pictures to all students or allow students to use pictures they have brought in. If setting the picture-finding task for homework, do the demons dem onstra tratio tion n in class class with with studen students ts first first with with you descri describin bing g the pictur picture e and the students stud ents drawing. drawing. Students Students will therefore therefore know exactly why the picture picture is required required and can choose something that they are able to describe. Be prepared for some students to have forgotten to do their homework and have something suitable that they can use. Phrases such as “in the foreground, in the background, to the side” will be useful. Describe The Word

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: Prepare a list of words of things students can describe  Tell the students the purpose of the game, which is to describe words. This is useful as sometimes some times one can be at a loss for a vocabular vocabulary y word and have to describe describe what one is trying to say. In addition the activity allows students to use a wide range of language, which helps speaking fluency. Divide the to students into small or pairs. The students think up objects that they know how describe and raceteams to describe as many objects as possible to their pair or team members within a given given time frame. If students cannot cannot guess the word players can

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move on to another object to avoid getting stuck. With lower intermediates you may allow the simplest of descriptions such as "you write with it" to describe a pen. With more advanced students have a rule where the team can only have one guess. This means that the person describing the object has to be as detailed as possible to have the best chance of gaining the team point. For example: it is a large animal with big ears and a trunk and it is usually grey. Another example: it is a small flat rectangular piece of plastic that you use to pay for things. Another way of making the game suitable for advanced students is to give them a list of words to describe that are not basic nouns but concepts or feelings such as; timid, feeling blue, insurance, assurance, and vitality.  You can do asofpair work or should in small teams. and You this mayis find it if beneficial students withthis a list words they describe, useful you wanttotoprovide review specific spec ific vocabulary. vocabulary. Alternatively Alternatively allow students to describe describe words that they think of themselves. To be on the safe side have lists of words ready so you can use these if your students are incapable of thinking up words on their own. Once students know this game you may set the task of preparing words and descriptions for homework for use in the the next class. Students should be motivated to prepare prepare difficult words for opposite teams to guess. With a multilevel class let the higher levels describe the words while the lower levels try to guess what it is. Detective Game

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Small to a class of up to about 30 Level: Beginner togroup Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None How to Play One student student is chosen chosen to be the detective and one the thief. The detective detective has three chances to find the thief, which he does by asking a question to three students of his choosing. choo sing. The question question can be any question form you like, like, such as what is your name, where do you live, or what were were you doing last night, etc. The three students answer answer the question accordingly and if one of them is the thief he must give himself up for arrest after answering the question. If the detective has not found the thief after asking three questions the thief got away so now choose a new thief and a new detective for the next round.  The above set-up works works well for a small group of students. students. If you have a larger group then pick thieves and detectives to ask and answer questions simultaneously so that moremore people are involved in speaking. A way to spice the game up is to allow the detective to ask as many students as possible in a give time frame. If you have some kind of timer that goes "tic "tick-to k-tock" ck" audibly audibly that adds an element of excitement. Allow the detective one minute only to find the thief and then play another round with a different detective. If you divide the whole class into two teams you can record which team finds the most thieves during the course of the game. Variation Another way to use the same idea but with a different scenario for variety is to reverse the procedure. Instead of the detective trying to find the thief you could have a situation where the student asking the question does not want to find the answer. For example you could have a thief who robs your house if you speak to him or her. The questioner asks three students a question. If one of those three is the thief the detective has his house robbed, so that team can lose a point.

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Fun ESL Activities for Teens and Adults

Dictation

 

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Category: Step 1 Listening Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the text you will dictate  This is a pretty unimaginative way to teach however once in a while it can be used as a listening and writing exercise. If you do use dictation do not dictate slowly word for word but read out the whole sentence at normal speed individual and repeatwords it several times.  This is much more challenging than writing speaking down detached and makes for a more meaningful experience for the students who have to listen more intently and also hear language being used in context. Dictation is useful as a listening activity when introducing new grammar. After using the rapid dictation method just described, write up the correct sentences on the board and let students check their work quickly at the end. If used occasionally this rapid dictation activity can be fun. Directions On The Board

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate - Directions Materials: None Preparation: None Draw a grid on the and board and write some numbers or letter letters s in eachorsquare squa re of grid. Blindfold a student tell him or her to circle a particular number letter by the following the directions given by the rest of the class. To add some fun divide the class and the board boa rd into into two or three three se secti ctions ons and let each each team team gui guide de the their ir team team mem member ber trying trying to beat the other teams to accomplish the task.

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Games E-G Either Or

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any - put large classes in teams Materials: None Preparation: Decide on some either/or things your students will use A student comes up with an either/or phrase such as, "love or hate". The next student proposes another choice such as, "earth or sky". For a fun way to play use the Relay Race idea to pass these choices along a team. With intermediate students the same phrase can be passed all the way down the line for reinforcement. Each team member must come up with one phrase, which is passed up or down the line. Advanced students can play by each coming up with something original. Here is a sele Here select ctio ion n of ex exam ampl ples es so yo you u ca can n se see e ho how w va vast st the the poss possib ibil ilit itie ies s ar are e for for language: trick or treat, big or small, valley or mountain, fat or thin, tea or coffee, near or far, bigger or smaller, little or large, carnivore or vegetarian, business or pleasure, more or less, here or there, now or later, true or false, etc.  Take any either/or idea and let l et students pass a message down the line arguing which is better, trick or treat, big or small, valley or mountain and so on. Students argue in i n favour of either big or little and define the context of their argument. For example "Little is better because if you eat a big plate of food you get fat. And little is also better because little feet are prettier than big feet. Little is better because little rooms cost less to heat" and so on. Or "Big is better because there is more room in a big car. Big is better because if you are hungry you you can eat a lot. lot. Near is better because because it takes no no time to get there. there. Far is better because it is exciting and exotic. And so on. If that is too difficult and students cannot think of anything quickly enough instead write up the "either" words on the board and let students think of "or" words that could go with the ones on the board, preferably in teams to give an edge to the activity. English Trivia

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill, Revision Level: All levels Group size: Any - put large classes into small groups Materials: See Appendix II for ready-made boards and card sets, and blanks to make your own categories. categories. One board game per group. group. Preparation: None once you have the board and questions – See Appendix II  This game works like Trivial Pursuit but instead i nstead of general knowledge questions you have categorie cate gories s of questions questions involving involving English, English, such as vocabulary vocabulary power, tenses, forming questions and general grammar. You can make a category for any any grammatical topic you you like.. For an easier like easier game use limited limited topics such as vocabula vocabulary ry words for sports, sports, the present pres ent tense and other other language language you have studied recently. recently. For a broader revision revision game widen the topics to include all vocabulary, all tenses and so on. Students can make their own boards on a piece of A4 paper by copying down the design you draw on the board. board. Eventually you might make make some fancy boards boards using card but a simple simpl e pattern pattern of squares with a start and and a finish finish are sufficient. sufficient. Some squares squares will be blue, some some red, some green and some yellow. yellow. These These coloured squares squares correspon correspond d to a language category. category. Students roll the dice and when they land on a colo coloured ured square they take a card from the relevant category and answer the question there.

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For beginners beginners this this could be a picture picture card, which which they must must name. For the gra grammar mmar it could be a picture card of an action, which the students must put into a sentence using the present continuous. continuous. For intermediates you might have a sentence written written out in the present tense and the task is to put this into the past tense. Students call on the teacher to verify an answer if no one in the group is sure. Figure It Out

 

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Category: Step 6 Creative Writing Group size: Any to Advanced Level: Beginner Materials: Pictures or words – See Appendix II I I for ready-made example sets Preparation: None, use the example sets in Appendix II for a demo and then have students prepare more for homework to use in a future class. Prepare sets of picture cards or words to each represent a theme. For example a beach would be sand, water, sunglasses and sun tan oil. Place these sets around the room if your class can get get up and move around. Failing Failing that use the board. Allow a time limit for for the task and let everyone decipher the clues to find the word. You may require students make up a sentence containing the word, or that they write a paragraph to describe it, or a story using all the words. For beginners finding the word may be enough.  To add a little fun as a variation, prepare one set of clues per person or pair of people. Hand these out face down and on the word "Go" students turn over the paper or card and have 20 seconds seconds to decipher the clue. You then call out "Pas "Pass!" s!" All students students pass their cardseconds to the person bswap ehind ifthem and take otime ne from the personthe in front. fro nt. will Allow only few for thebehind any time at all,the so one spent passing card come outa of the guessing time. Here are examples: Chocolate cake: chocolate, flour, butter, cake decoration Police station: policemen, handcuffs, building, parking ticket Hairdressers: hairbrush, scissors, money, mirror Car: wheels, steering wheel, baby seat  Telephone: communication, communication, speaking, wires, phone bill Mobile phone: tunes, communication, satellite, Hello Make some clues clues easy easy and others others more more cryptic cryptic for for a challenge. challenge. Students Students can prepar prepare e the clues clues for for homework. homework. Otherwise Otherwise it is quite quite easy to to come up up with cl clues. ues. Think of of a word you know your your students students have learned, learned, such as book. Next think think of the things in a book such as pages, numbers, words, paper and card, or what you use it for, or what things go with it. Fill In Drill

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate and possibly Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Choose a written passage or dialogue from your textbook or write one. On the board prepare a letter, short story or dialogue using grammar and vocabulary you have been teaching recently or would like to review. Let the class read it out and check everyone understands it by asking a couple of questions about the text. Next tell the class to read the first sentence carefully. Now rub out one word from that sentence and have a class member read it out again and fill in the blank with the missing word you just removed remo ved from memory. Now remove remove a second word from the sentence and ask anot another her stud studen entt to read read it out out agai again. n. This This shou should ld be very very ea easy sy and and serv serves es for for a clea clearr demonstration. Now youon can divide theAs class into pairs them rub takeout it in turns to read out the sentences the board. time goes on and you have gradually more and

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more words. As an alternative to pair work you can play this game with the whole class reading out the letter and filling in the blanks together in unison. Here is an example of text using conditionals: "What would you do if you won the lottery? I would first donate ten percent to charity and then I would give some to my family. I expect my brother would buy a new car right away. He'd get a Ferrari knowing him. Of course that would depend on how much money I gave him, which would depend on how much I had won in the first place!"   Start by deleting words such as "would" + "won" rather than "lottery". Delete verbs and little Start slowly listen in to little see how students doing.words Deleterather more than wordsnouns when first. you see that they and are coping. Too words deleted are will be too easy and too many will be too hard so err on the side of caution. Too easy is better than too hard because at least the students are practising accurate English. To help you can delete part of a word and leave the first letter as a clue: "_____ _______ you __ if you  ____ the l_______?" Find The Pairs Memory Game

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Small groups Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: 2 sets of matching picture or word cards Preparation: Try the example set in Appendix II, or fill in the blank set for your purposes How to Play  This is alsothem known Concentration. Take two of out identical pictures, themgame and spread outasface down. The pictures can sets be laid randomly or in shuffle a grid. Player one turns over two cards and names the items. If they are a pair player one keeps the cards. If they are not a pair player one turns them back over, leaving them face down in the same place. Player two now turns over two cards, attempting to turn over two identical pictures, and naming the items. The game continues until all the pairs have been found. In the classic game when a player turns over a pair they get another go. However as the goal is to have the group talking rather than find a winner, I prefer to let each person have only one turn. This makes it less likely for the brighter person to win all the pairs leaving the others with nothing. A nice way to keep everyone interested, even when it is not their turn, aside from the fact that they are supposed to be memorising the cards, is to split your group into two teams. Each person has a turn as normal, however if he or she cannot name the item, then the team te am memb member ers s ca can n he help lp.. If a that pair pair pair. is turn tu rned ed counting ov over er but butup the thall e team te ampairs ca cann nnot name naend me one the the vocabulary, they forfeit winning When the atotthe can have a winning team rather than a winning individual. Language Ideas  The language possibilities to use with this game are unlimited, keeping an eye as always on the complexity, so that the game does not drag. Vocabulary Each player simply names the item on the cards as he or she turns them over. Phrases Each Eac h player player forms a short short phras phrase e includ including ing the item item on the card. card. For For exa exampl mple e wit with h pictures of people one could use adjectives such as "a pretty girl", "a tall boy", or with places "a big city", "a small village". Sentences

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Each player forms a sentence using one or both of the items. For example if you are using pictures of food players can say: "I like butter and milk", or "I like butter but I don't like milk". If you are using pictures of people players can say; "Her name is Claudia" or "She is a dentist", or "She is from Spain", or "She is wearing trousers", etc. One can also practise comparatives such as "the girl is taller than the boy", or "the girl is older than the baby". More Mo re advanc advanced ed studen students ts can use more more compli complicat cated ed str struct ucture ures, s, depend depending ing on the language you would like them to use. For example, "I was going to buy some milk but I bought some cheese instead", or "I have never been to London but I have been to Paris". Questions Players can can ask related to each picture theydoes turn she over. For example withissets of people one ca n questions ask, "What's her her name?" Or "Where live?" or "Ho "How w old she?" With two teams one can also have one team ask the players of the other team a question that the player answers on turning over the two cards. For example team one asks, "Where did you go last summer?" and the player from team two turns over the two cards and replies, "I went to London and Paris". Materials  You need matching sets of pictures if you have flashcards to hand. This is best for memorizing vocabulary. If you are making sentences you can use words, as the focus is on grammar rather than plain vocabulary. Fizz Buzz

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Small groups of up to 12 Level: Beginner Materials: None to Intermediate Preparation: None Have all your players sit round in a circle of 12 people maximum per circle. The first player says one, the next says two, the next says three, and so on. Now add in an element; every time the number 2 comes up, or a number with 2 in it (such as 12, 20, 22, 26, etc), the player must say FIZZ instead of the number. For example: 1 FIZZ 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 FIZZ 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 FIZZ FIZZ FIZZ etc until 30, then 31, FIZZ, 33 etc. Once the group have mastered this idea to some degree throw in another element, such as any number with a 5 in it becomes BUZZ.  This would give: 6 7 8 9 10 11 FIZZ 13 14 BUZZ 16 etc. 1 FIZZ 3 4 BUZZ If you want to make things really complicated you can say that any number which can be divided by 2 or 5 is a FIZZ BUZZ. Other language ideas  You can also use this fun game to revise vocabulary. Here is an example: using animal vocabulary you have a rule where any animal ending in an R is followed by FIZZ, and any animal ending in a T is followed by BUZZ, any animal ending in an E is followed by FIZZ BUZZ. A round might look like this:  Tiger, FIZZ, Antelope, FIZZ BUZZ, Elephant, BUZZ, ant, BUZZ, Lion, duck, bird, crocodile, FIZZ BUZZ, etc.  This game is quite tricky and you would definitely want to precede the game with a game like Brainstorm , or or Ping-pong   before beforehan hand d to refres refresh h everyo everyone' ne's s memory memory of animal animal vocabulary.

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Forfeits

 

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Ask the students to come up with their own ideas of forfeits they find acceptable for homework. Below is a list of mostly sensible ideas for forfeits that can be used in many games. Name a picture flashcard Spell out a word Make a sentence or a question using the target language Ask a friend any question in English Name three things you like Answer aaquestion to the teacher suchseconds as, "Do you have a sister?" Balance ball on your head for three Bounce a ball saying 10, 20, 30 etc. up to 100 Say your name backwards. Count to 10, or from any number to another number, such as 51 to 63  Yawn until you make someone someone else yawn Do a sum such as 70 minus 60 Say a tongue twister (see Tongue Twisters  for  for ideas) Stand on one leg and do not smile for ten seconds  Try and make someone someone else laugh in ten seconds Look at someone and do not smile for a full minute Say a sentence about kangaroos, or elephants, or any other topic. Intermediates say 2 or 3 sentences about a topic Advanced students give a spontaneous one-minute talk about a topic. The topic can be serious or silly, such as why I want a cobra for a pet. Gap Fill Game

 

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Category: Step 3 Writing Drill Group size: All class sizes Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: Prepared Prepared sentences with matching gap fills. fills. See Appendix II for an example. Preparation: Prepare your gap fills, take them from your textbook or make them. Here is an easy, fun writing game. You need some room between desks in class, as this game involves some walking in class. This game is to be played once your students are familiar with the vocabulary and sentences and is particularly good for practising specific grammar. The example in Appendix II practises a variety variety of negative sentence sentences. s. How to play Divide the class into pairs. Each student has a sheet with sentences on it that you want to work on. With a big class give each student three sentences and with a smaller group you can use fills more. These sheets fullthe sentences stay onstudents the students' desks. out gap around the class with that the match full sentences have on theirSpread desks. Students memorise the first sentence on their sheet that stays on their desks. Students then move around the class searching for the corresponding gap fill while holding the full se sente ntence nce in their their mind. mind. They They cannot cannot take the sheet sheet around around with them them wit with h the full sentence on it. This ensures that mental effort is made to memorise. Once a student has found the corresponding gap fill he or she fills it in and returns to his or her desk to memorise the second sentence and then find the gap fill version of that.  You can put students in teams and see which team has all its members finish first. Language ideas to use with this game Use any sentence or question form in any tense. For beginners stick to short sentences and use only known known vocabulary when dea dealing ling with a new gramma grammarr point. Use the game with only one grammatical form when presenting new grammar and mix up all sorts of sentences for a revision revision exercise. See Appendix II for an example with negativ negatives. es.

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Getting To Know You

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any - put large classes in teams Materials: None Preparation: None  This is a good way for students to get to know each other and work on fluency. Divide the students into two teams. A student from team A makes a statement about someone on team suchAas, youNow like ittea." answers with true or false. If Sally answers, "true"Bteam get"Sally, a point. is a Sally student from team B's turn to make a statement about a member of team A such as, "Maria you play tennis." Maria answers with true or false, and so on. Tell the students that they must be honest or the game is no fun. You may like to award points for correctly formed statements as well. This motivates students to take more care, or you may like to play a faster pace and let some errors go. You can always alwa ys write up the correct correct way to say it on the board while the game is going on. Then ask for a similar statement using the same construction so students have a chance to hear it said properly. With a small group use a free for all approach where any student can contribute as soon as he or she has thought of something. Alternatively let the students take it in turns in a more mo re stru struct ctur ured ed way. way. With With a larg large e grou group p yo you u may may ne need ed four four team teams s and and ha have ve two two separate games going on simultaneously. Good Evening Beach Ball

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill, easy warmer Group size: Best with smaller groups Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: A beach ball you have written on Preparation: None Buy a beach ball or any cheap softball that you can write on. Using a marker pen divide up the ball into segments and write a friendly greeting in each segment such as, "Good evening Shelley (you write your name here)" or "How do you do?" or "How are you?" If you use a marker pen that washes off you can use the same beach ball for different sentences. Probably it is better to own a couple of different balls as you can reuse these over and over again with your different classes and that way you do not need to spend time rewriting things on the ball.  Your tired students show up in class in the evening and they start off throwing this beach ball around. This notcatch only wakes upall your tired businessmen butout it takes the pressure off because when they the ball they have to do is read the phrase that their thumbs are pointing to and throw the ball to the next person. You'll understand what an impact this class opener can have when you walk in one day and the student who never says anything without being prompted grins and greets you with "Good evening Shelley". Grammar Auction

 

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Category: Step 3 - Recognising correct grammar Group size: 2 or more Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Sentences Preparation: Write out the sentences on large strips of paper, or prepare the sentences ready to write on the board  This game is based on a public auction but students aren't buying antiques, they are bidding on the sentences. The object is to theThe sentences thatseveral are grammatically correct and avoid ones that have errors inbuy them. game has useful purposes: to

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review previously taught grammar, to practice editing skills and it can allow for a review of currency units if it is played with fake money.  You will need a number of sentences written out on strips that can be seen from the back of the room. Use chart chart paper or pre-cut sentence sentence strip paper paper about two feet wide with letters about three inches high. If you cannot get fancy paper you can cut A4 paper in two from top to bottom then stick the strips together in a line. Remember to write the sentence before sticking if you use sticky tape! (You could just write them on the board, and put the points and initials of the purchaser next to it during the auction.) There should be about three sentences per student and about half of them should have errors. Vary difficulty and the number of errors but be sure to stick to grammar pointsthe thatlevel haveofbeen previously taught.  You will also need counters or currency for the students to bid with. You can either give them an amount to keep track of (maths practice) or you can hand out play money (currency and maths practice). Make sure that all the students have plenty of money since the object is to keep them bidding all the way through the game. How to Play  The teacher stands at the front of the room with the sentences and holds them up one at a time. If the students think the sentence is correct, then they bid on it. Students can work in pairs or singly. Each student or pair of students will bid against each other for the sentences that they think have no errors. When a student outbids everyone else for a sentence the teacher puts a sticker on the sentence with the name of the student and the amount paid. At the end of the auction the teacher goes through the sentences with the class. If a sentence was correct then the student gets the same amount of points as he paid for it. If a sent senten ence ce has has one one or more more er erro rors rs th then en th the e clas class s corr correc ects ts it toge togeth ther er and and th the e student who bought it loses the same number of points as he or she paid for it. If correct and no one bought bought it then all the students students lose one hundred point points. s. The student with the most points, or money at the end is the winner!  Troubleshooting If you have a student who bids their entire amount on one sentence because he or she is so sure it is correct then next time you play have a rule where students must buy a minimum of three sentences each or they have a penalty.  To check that your students are not bidding more money that they actually have at the end you can tally up the winner's points and check that he or she does not have more points than the original sum of money given out at the beginning. This is one reason why you name and amount on end, a post-it sticker right of onthe thepoints sentence strip. you write do thethe final calculations at the you or have a record spent andWhen who spent them, and you can check the student's maths with a calculator. Grammar Drill

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: Pictures or words. The cards for Subject Verb Object in Appendix II could be used for this. Preparation: None How to Play  The students sit in a circle with a pile of picture cards face down in the centre. One student turns over a picture card and makes a specified sentence including that word. Students shouldMake work sure in groups ofgup to eight group order to avoid too much delay between betw een turns. a strong stron student stude nt is per present presen t inineach group if possible as group leader. You circulate and monitor as much as you can. If you have a large class which will

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work in severa work severall groups groups and be diffic difficult ult for you to mon monito itor, r, the then n before before you let the students play in groups do a few drills by way of demonstration before beginning so that the structure can sink in a little as it is most important that students make accurate sentences.  You can do this as a dry drill and most adults will be happy with that. You can also turn it into a game. For example you may use any kind of board game and let players advance 5 squares every time they make a sentence that is accurate. In addition keep all players involved at all times and not just when it is their turn by asking players to listen and decide if the sentence is correct or not. Players may also advance by a given number of square squ ares s gfor cor rectly tly assess asswell essing sen ce.them The pla s should sho uld tak take e eequal equ al turns tur ns on in as asse sess ssin ing sent secorrec nten ence ces s as we lling as ainsenten maki matence. king ng th em.. player If yers yo your ur st stud uden ents ts ar are no not t ke keen en individual competition put them into two teams and have just one piece on the board that represents all the adults on that team. This has the advantage of not showing up any student who is much weaker than the others. A second way to spice up the game is to use forfeits. If a student makes a mistake he or she loses a life and when he or she has lost three lives a forfeit is in order! See the Forfeits section for ideas. A third way to add some fun is to use a timer set to go off every few minutes. The student making a sentence when the timer goes off has to say a tongue twister, do some kind of forfeit, or loses some points. Basic Sentence Examples Food and I like, I don't like: Place a pile of food pictures face down. Students pick a card and say whether or not they like that food. Professions and I'm a: Students pick a card and say: I'm a ... Places: Students pick a city or country and say: I'm from... Basic Grammar Examples Present tense: Two piles of pictures, one of people and one of professions. Students turn over one picture from each pile and make the corresponding sentence, such as: He is a doctor. Present continuous: Two piles of pictures, one of people and one of actions. Students turn ov over er one one pi pict ctur ure e fr from om ea each ch pile pile and and make make the the se sent nten ence ce su such ch as as:: She She is ea eati ting ng.. Simple past: Two piles of pictures such as people and actions. Students pick two cards and make the sentence such as: She walked the dog. Prep Prepos osit itio ions ns:: Two Two piles piles of pict pictur ures es such such as obje object cts s and and furn furnit iture ure.. Stud Studen ents ts make make sentences with the two pictures such as: The ball is under the table. Other tenses and grammar: The same idea can be used to work with any tense or grammatical structure. If you do not have pictures use word flashcards instead. The advantage of using pictures is that it helps revise vocabulary at the same time as drilling the sentence structure or grammar. Grammar Knock Out

 

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Category: Step 1 Listening Drill Group size: Any Level: All levels Materials: None Preparation: Prepare the sentences you you will use during the game if you cannot think of them off the cuff. Use this for new grammar. Let the students listen to a new grammar structure two or three thr ee times such as: Did you go to the cinema cinema last night? night? Exp Explai lain n the gramma grammarr in question and show how the sentence is built on the board. Now read out a selection of similar questions one by one and let the students say whether they are right or wrong. Students put their for right, their hands desks if wrong. Start reading out questions that hands are all up correct then and gradually slip in on some errors such as: Didby you go to the the shop shops s tomo tomorr rrow ow? ? Did Did yo you u went went to the the shop shops? s? Did Did yo you u bough boughtt so some me toma tomato toes es

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yesterday? If students put their hands up for these sentences have other students explain the error. A variant with a small group is to go around in a circle circle with students tak taking ing it in turns to say whether your statement is right or wrong. If students get it wrong they lose a life and when they lose three lives they they do a forfeit. You may review a wide range range of tenses and grammatical structures for more advanced students and stick to a limited amount of basic phrases for beginners. Guess the Action

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill - good for present and past continuous Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Word flashcards or a list of the actions you want mimed Preparation: None How to play - present continuous and/or vocabulary Divide the class into two teams. Show team A a picture picture of an action or a wo word rd flashcard.  Team A mime that action and team B have to guess what they are doing using the present continuous. How to play - past continuous and/or vocabulary Divide the class into two teams. teams. Team A face the wall while you show team B an action which they mime until you say FREEZE. Team Team B now freeze in their positions positions,, team A turn around and have to guess what team B was doing. Organisation If you have a large class play with four teams instead of two. Each student in the team guessing makes makes one guess. Every correct guess earns a point for that team. That points points system gives you a valid excuse to get all the students to use the target language. To keep the pace up use simple sentences of things that are easy to act out. Sports, action verbs such as running or jumping and hobbies are obvious examples. Guess the Question

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill for Grammar Review Group size: Better with fewer students Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the questions you will use for the exercise Use to or review language rather than Write up students the first into wordtwo of everythis word a question or sentence or such for as: new W___structures. i_ y___ n__ n___? _? Divide teams. Team A has a go at guessing the first word. If correct they can go on to guess the second word and so on, but if wrong team B has a turn. A team keeps guessing words until it makes an error, then the other team takes over. Only the team that guesses the last word gets the point! In this case the sentence is: What is your name? Use questions or se sente ntence nces s that that contai contain n gramma grammatic tical al struct structure ures s and vocabu vocabular lary y that that you wan wantt to review. Guess the Word

 

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Category: Spelling Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None Have a player come up to the board and write down the letters you spell out. Take your time in between letters, as the idea is that the class have to guess what word you are

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spelling out. Divide the class into teams and encourage the students to call out any word at all regardless of the fact that you may only have written one letter up so far. As an incentive you can award one point for any word that could have been correct and five points for the actual correct word. If you do this have a student keep the score so you can concentrate on the class and spelling the words. For example if your word is CHOCOLATE it starts with C so a student student who calls out CAT can win one po point. int. If you have the letters CH up on the board the word CAT would no longer earn a point, but the word CHANT would.. Award five points would points when someone calls calls out CHOCOLATE. CHOCOLATE. For an easy game use words from one theme only such as food. Use random words for intermediates with larger vocabulary. Give clues if you need to. Guess the Word Variation

 

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 You can also involve more people at once once by making each column of people in the class a team, with one student from each team at the front of the class by the board. The one at the front has a series of words, say four or five words to guess, which can all belong to a theme for beginners, but can be totally random for advanced players. The person at the front starts to write out the word, but they are only allowed to write out the first 4 letters of the word, then their team has to guess the word. As soon as they have guessed the word correctly the one at the front writes out the first four letters of the second word, and so on until all the words have been guessed.  The idea is to be the first first to guess all the words. You'll You'll need to give out different wo words rds for each team in this game, as the teams will hear the other teams calling out words. A quick way to prepare is to have each team write down 5 or 6 words for another team to guess. Guess Who Listening

 

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Category: Step 4 Listening Fluency Level: Intermediate Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: Have information about famous people for a demonstration and then let the students prepare this for homework for the next class.   Startt to talk about someone Star someone famous, famous, or someone someone that everyone everyone in class class knows. Give obliqu obl ique e facts facts to start start out with but gradua gradually lly becom become e more more and more detail detailed ed unt until il someone some one guesses guesses whom you are talking about. about. Use this with objec objects ts as well as people.  This is a good task to set for homework before the game. Tell each student to hand you a biographical summary of a famous person including facts about his or her life. Use these summaries for the activity in the next lesson. Students are not allowed to guess the famous person that they researched.  With a big class distribute the summaries and let students work in small groups to guess each other's famous people.

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Games H-K Hand Sign Stories

 

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Category: Listening to learn new vocabulary Group size: All class sizes Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: A vocabulary vocabulary list and a story which uses those words. Textbook passages passages are often good for thisfor game, or use story books, articles from the web or other very sources suitable the level of children's your students. Preparation: Choose your text and key words to use with hand signs.  This is a great way to memorize vocabulary, especially for students who show a preference of kinaesthetic learning (always moving, touching things and having difficulty retaining material they have heard or read about). Hand Signs works very well with adults if you introduce it the right way. First go over a list of new vocabulary words and their meanings. Then ask your students to write down as many as they can remember. When you go over the ones they remembered, ask for definitions. Your students won't be able to remember very many. Then tell them that you're going to improve their recall by giving them a way to remember vocabulary and definitions more easily. Play the game as explained below. At the end ask your students to list the vocabulary and then ask them to define the words. You'll find that they improve their recall significantly and after that they won't have any problem with playing the game in the future. How to play: First go over the list of vocabulary words and their meanings with the class as a whole. Together decide on a gesture or sign that will stand for the word. The funnier the better, but they should be meaningful. For example, if the word were nurse, you could stic stick k yo your ur fing finger er in yo your ur mo mout uth h li like ke it was was a ther thermo mome mete ter. r. This This woul would d be a ve very ry memorable sign. The word doctor might be represented by putting your fingers in your ears with the thumbs hanging down below the face and touching under the chin like a stethoscope. A teacher could be represented by miming writing on the board.  You can also help your students come up come up with signs for abstract concepts if you stay open to the students' culture. For example 'honesty' in the United States might be symbolized by raising your right hand as if swearing on the bible. This is something that Americans do in the courts. In other countries it's going to be different. It's very important that students make up gestures that are significant to them, but are the same for the whole class. Your job is to facilitate a consensus on what the hand signs for each word should Once there are each word, run through them with the list a few times sobe. that everyone has gestures had somefor practice. Next instruct the students to listen to the story you are going to read them and make the correct hand sign every time they hear one of the vocabulary words. If the gesture is meaningful and if the story is context rich then students will learn the words on the vocabulary list with very little trouble. The object is to complete the story with everyone making the correct hand sign. Variation 1: The original is a cooperative game, but you can make it competitive with teams or individuals. By thinking of it as a version of Simon Says, any student who gives the wrong sign for a word takes a point. In this game the lowest score wins. Variation 2: Tell the story but when you come to a vocabulary word use the hand sign only. The students call out the word, based on the hand sign they see. Variation 3:different Instead of coming upvocabulary with the hand signsEach as apair class, haveup the students work in pairs on parts of the lesson. comes with hand signs

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for their words and then teaches them to the rest of the class. Then the game proceeds as usual. Hangman

 

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Category: Spelling Group size: Pair work or small groups Level: Beginner Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the words you want to test  This is the classic hangman game of old. You, or one of the players, decide on a word and write up the number of letters in that word with dashes. E.g. if the word were Dinosaur you would would write up _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _. The other other players players have to guess guess what the word word is and they do this by naming the letters of the alphabet. If they name a letter which is in the word, for example in this case the letter N , then you fill it into the the blank: _ _ n _ _ _ _ _. If however however a letter is named named which is not part of the word wo rd,, such such as the le lett tter er E   in this case, then you start to draw the "hangman". The drawing drawi ng represents represents a man being hung from a noose. noose. The idea is that that the word must be guessed before the man is hung. The hangman is drawn in eleven strokes strokes like this:

Hangman Variant

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill - Question practice Group size: Pair work or small groups Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Pictures or descriptions Preparation: Choose your picture or description that the class must ask questions about Using the same drawing as above you can play Hangman to do more than say letters and spell words. Here is an example of this variant using clothing: You, or a class member stand stan d up at the board with a picture or descriptio description n of a perso person n in various various clothes. clothes. The class have to guess what the person is wearing before you finish the hangman drawing. First tell them if it is a man or a woman. If it is a man your group members can ask questions like: "Is he wearing a shirt?" If he is wearing a shirt you or the person at the board draws the shirt. If he is not wearing a shirt you start the hangman drawing. You could turn this into a general guessing game using multiple question forms where the class have to guess what is on a given picture. The object or activity depicted must be guessed before the hangman is completed. Higher or Lower

 

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Category: Listening or Speaking Drill - Comparatives or numbers Group size: Flexible Level: Beginner

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Materials: Playing cards, picture or word cards Preparation: Prepare the relevant word cards for comparatives Class version: If working with the whole class or large group turn over a card and read the number numb er out loud. With students students divided into two teams, teams, everyone decides whether whether they think the next card will be higher higher or lower than the previous previous one. Those who think it will be higher say "higher" and point towards the ceiling. All those who think it will be lower say "lower" and point towards the floor. Turn over the next card and read it out. Those who were wrong are out and have to sit down. Continue until you have a handful of winners. Pair work version: In pairs each pair has a pack of playing cards or number cards. Each player states whether they think the next card will be higher or lower, if correct the player keeps the card and the idea is to collect as many cards as possible. Where there is a tie, if both players say "higher", then the card remains in the pile. The next time one of the pair wins they take the whole pile of unclaimed cards. You can work with numbers by having a player name the card that is turned over each time. Language Ideas: Numbers and comparatives  To use the higher numbers say that each number is x10 or x100 its face value. So 6 would become 60 or 600.  This is also an ideal game for comparatives such as "5 is higher than 4", "3 is lower than 10", etc. You can also use "more than" and "less than", and "the same as". A variant on this game is to use sets of picture or word cards. Here is an example with animals: anim als: Each time a card is turne turned d over the players players guess whether the next one will be bigger big ger or smalle smaller, r, and then fa faste sterr or slower slower (in real real life, life, not in the pictu picture) re).. Oth Other er examples that spring to mind are people, who can be taller, shorter, thinner, fatter, younger, etc. You can also use types of transport, which can be faster or slower. Homework

 

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Category: Step 6 Writing Group size: Flexible Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Prepare clear instructions for the students  You can kill two birds with one stone and use your students to prepare material for future classes through homework. For example have your students write something up which you mark. The students then bring the corrected version into class and you can use the written material in an activity. Exam Exampl ples es of ga game mes s wher where e this this is a us usef eful ul st stra rate tegy gy ar are: e: An Anag agra rams ms,, Ca Call ll My Bl Bluf ufff Definitions, Cryptic Clues, Decision Time, Figure it Out, Gap Fill Game, Pairs, Persuasion, Questionnaires, Quiz Race, Jokes, Memory Challenge and Story Telling. Hot Seat

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Class divided into teams Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide which words you will have described Write up a selection of words on the board. Place a chair at the front of the class facing the students so that the person sitting there cannot see the board, where a selection of words is written. A member of team A sits in the chair. Team A have one minute to describe as many words as possible to their team member without mentioning the word itself, using no gestures or drawing. Any cheating and that team's team's time in the hot seat seat is over. The student in the hot seat names as many items as possible. Once named these items are removed from the board. When the minute is up a member from team B comes

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into the hot seat seat and you repeat until until all the words have been named. named. If possible possible have two teams working at the same time with two hot seats. This way the teams can race each other to finish describing all the words. If you have a class of 30 you could play this with three teams of ten and have all three teams playing together. Swap over the person in the hot seat for each team every minute and play until all the words have been guessed. The minute a student in the hot seat names an item on the board a student rubs it out and awards a point to that team. How It's Made

 

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Category: Group size:

Step 5 Speaking Fluency This can be played played in groups, groups, or even be done done by a single p player. layer. The The maximum number of players in a group is determined by the number of steps in the directions. Each player must have at least one step to work with, however, they can have more than one if there are more steps than players. Level: High Beginner to Advanced Materials: Strips of paper or card, one with each step of the instructions written on it.  The ingredients or items that need need to be put together as sta stated ted in the instructions, such as puzzles or models models.. Variant four has has no instructions. instructions. Preparation: Photocopying or writing instructions Purpose 1. Practice sequencing 2. Practice following directions 3. Build teamwork

Prep time Use the examples in Appendix Appendix II as demonstrations and set th the e task to students for homework, homework, in groups or individually, to write instructions for for others. If any students have models or or Lego sets at home tthese hese are ideal. You photocopy the instructions (enlarge them if necessary) and chop them int into o chunks. Simpler models are better if you are not using pictures.  Things to build could be Origami, Tangrams, Tangrams, a sandwich, models, Lego or puzzles. Rules of the game How It's Made simply requires directions on assembling something. It is always fun to do peanut butter sandwiches or some other simple food, and actually bring in the ingredients to practice with. The teacher hands out the strips of paper or card to the players. Each player reads their piece of paper, out loud, but they cannot show the paper to anyone. Students discuss discuss their step with the others and dec decide ide where they fit in. The group must try to put themselves in order so that when they each read their step of the instructions out loud, the whole thing makes sense and can be correctly followed. Once they are in order, they can try to actually create the items in the instructions.  This can be done with blocks or or a simple puzzle or model Lego Lego.. Give the more advanced students more steps steps and/or more more complex instructions. instructions. The beginners have have something simple, like putting the wheels on on the Lego car. You can actually photocopy photocopy the instructions that come with the model – making them a bit bigger, and cut them up, giving out a paragraph or two per student. student. It's best to have one model model to every three or four students to allow for plenty of speaking practice. Variation 1: Have two groups working simultaneously, simultaneously, and the winner is the group that finishes first. Variation 2: Have individuals sort the all the strips, the student that finishes first wins. Variation 3: Give each individual or group a finished item and have them write out instructions to make it. it. Test their instructions instructions by trading them with others and seeing if they work.

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Variation 4: Another way to play this if you have no instructions to hand is to simply have a rule where a student cannot cannot move any piece without saying saying something. If a student wants to pick up a piece off the table and try it to see if it fits on the model or in the puzzle, or stick it with another piece, he or she MUST say something in English. For example, using a puzzle with a picture that includes some red flowers: advanced students give a running commentary of their actions, "I'm just going to see if this small red piece fits on here... it looks looks like it might be part of a flo flower. wer. Oh no, it doesn't fit". Whereas a beginner might say, "I think this is a flower", or "it fits/it doesn't fit". Alternatively you can have students repeat any kind of sentence or grammar that you are learning, and it does not have have to be related to the theme of the puzzle or model at all. So a beginner could say "I like pears" and this will give them the right to try a piece on the model or puzzle. If working with several groups they ca can n race each other to se see e who finishes first. Interviews

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Divide class in pairs or small groups Materials: Interview questions Preparation: Version 1: students prepare for this with homework. Version 2: No preparation Explain the purpose of this activity to students, which is to improve speaking fluency and interview technique or asking and answering questions. The purpose of the activity will also depend on the type of interview that you set up and the tense you conduct most of the the in inte terv rvie iew w in in.. Fo Forr ex exam ampl ple e in a jo job b in inte terv rvie iew w ca cand ndid idat ates es will will be talk talkin ing g abou aboutt themselves, their past experience and what they hope to contribute to the company and gain for themselves, so this uses a wide variety of language and tenses.   Interviews do not need to only be about getting a job. They can be about anything such as sele select ctin ing g a nutr nutrit itio ioni nist st to desi design gn meal meals s for for a ho hosp spit ital al,, se sele lect ctin ing g one one type type of environmentally sound building over another, one type of energy over another, one type of military uniform over another based on the climate and needs of the army, and so on. If you are teachi teaching ng specia specialis lised ed groups groups your your interv interview iews s can concer concern n techni technical cal detail details s relevant to the needs of your students. For example if you have engineers the interview can concern their ideas on a construction project. This will motivate the students because they will feel the activity is highly relevant to their language needs. Version 1 with written homework as preparation: Give the students the task of preparing interview questions for homework. You can mark these questions beforehand if you wish. Students then bring in their questions to class and take turns in interviewing each other. Students can interview several other students and select a candidate for their job or requirement from those interviewed. Version 2 - in class writing and speaking activity: Use this with any topic of interview. The exampl exa mple e given given here here is suitab suitable le for beginn beginners ers to lower lower int interm ermedi ediate ates s and concer concerns ns describing and talking about people. First students think about a famous person who they would like to meet and write that person's name at the top of a piece of paper. Leaving their paper on their desks students mill around class looking at other people's famous people and writing questions that they would like to know about that famous person on the sheet. Allow ten minutes or less for that, during which time the teacher can be on hand to help students form their questions or correct any errors in questions that have been written down, and then have all students return to their desks and read the questions written for them by others. Students should endeavour to correct any errors in the questions and ask the teacher teacher if unsure unsure.. Finall Finally y studen students ts pair pair up and interv interview iew each other other about about their their chosen famous people using the questions written on the paper.

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I Took A Trip

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill - Past tense question forms Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Divide class into small groups Materials: None Preparation: None Start by saying to the group: "I took a trip. What did I take with me?" The group members each name an item such as a T-shirt, a suitcase, a book, your dog, an alarm clock and a bacon sandwich. Next you ask a different question such as: "What did I travel on?" The students must give the same answers as before; a T-shirt, a suitcase, a book, your dog, etc. Next ask, "What did I wear around my neck?" Students give the same answers as before. If anyone laughs or smiles at an answer they must do a forfe rfeit! Continue asking questions such as; "What did I eat? What did I photograph? What did I take swimming?" Play another round and let the students think up questions to ask. Jazz Chants

 

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Category: Step 5 Fluency Activity Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Divide a large class into small groups Materials: Sentences, songs or a reading passage, a metronome is optional Preparation: None Give students short dialogues, lyrics from songs or any written material that you want to work with. Students are to read out their text with a rhythm in the background. For this use a metronome if you have one or have the class or a partner clapping rhythmically as the beat. Students Students are free to fit the text into the beat as best they can. Some students students who are musical will do this well naturally and for others it will be harder. If you try this yourself first you will see that it is excellent for fluency as often one is obliged to run many words together quickly to fit into a beat.  The pace of the beat should not be too fast but just under one beat per second. One beat per second is quite slow and you could use that for beginners. Here are some examples of how the first words of this game explanation can be said. The syllable in bold indicates where the beat falls, which is when the other students clap. Give-stud-ents-short (di-a-logues) - This is one syllable per beat and you do not want this, as it is dreary and too slow. Give-students-short-dialogues - This is much better and students have to say the word 'dialogues' quite quickly to fit it into the beat.

Give students short dialogues, lyrics from songs - This is much more musical. The student has started on the upbeat with 'give' and used a triplet for 'dialogues'. Here is an extended example for those of you who may still be unsure. Clap a steady beat and say the words below with an accent on the syllable in bold, which you say at the same time as the clap. The other syllables fit rhythmically into the space between claps. Give students short dialogues, lyrics from songs or a-ny written material that you want to work with. Students are to read out their text with a rhythm in the background. If you are not musical yourself and you do not know what an upbeat or triplet is, don't worry,, you do not need to know about those things. worry things. Experiment Experiment beforehand beforehand with saying saying some text in different rhythms to a beat so that you can demonstrate to the class. Everyone benefits from this activity whether musical or not!

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Jeopardy

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill or Fluency Activity Group size: 2 to 20 students. With 2 to 4 students play individually, with more students put them into teams of 4 students per team Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Jeopardy board from Appendix II for small groups or use the class board. Preparation: Questions for the grammar or topic you are practising which the students can prepare for homework  This game reviews previously taught information, gives question and answer practice, with structured team interaction and builds team skills. Preparation  This game is based on a popular American quiz game. It takes a little preparation preparation the first time, but once you've made up a set of questions keep them for future use and then there won't be any prep time at all. You'll need a Jeopardy board, either by printing the one in Appendix II or draw one on the board. If using the class board  You need twenty-five envelopes and at least thirty cards (5 category cards, and 25 question quest ion cards) cards) that fit into the envelopes. envelopes. Write up your five categori categories es across across the board. Now, stick up the envelopes in a 5X5 pattern with a column under each category card. Make sure you cut off the flaps so that they make open pockets that will hold question cards. On the envelopes you should write the number of points each question is worth. The first row is 50 points, the second is 75 points, the third is 125 points, the fourth is 200 points, points, and the fifth is 500 points. points. That is your Jeopardy board board made up. Small boards for table top games If your students are working in small groups use the Jeopardy Board and blank cards in Appendix II. Vocabulary Tenses One envelope stuck in each grid with question card inside

Question Forms

Irregular Verbs

General

50 points

50 points

50 points

75 points

75 points

75 points

75 points

75 points

125 points

125 points

125 points

125 points

125 points

200 points

200 points

200 points

200 points

200 points

500 points

500 points

500 points

500 points

500 points

Next you need topics and related questions. For these choose topics you have already covered in class. For beginners you might use topics such as clothing, sports, food, the weathe wea therr and countr countries ies.. Or you might might use topics topics such such as nouns, nouns, ver verbs, bs, adj adject ective ives, s, prepositions and adverbs. Or you might choose pop music, fashion, movies, famous chefs and fiction. If you have business students you might have business related topics with questions such as "Which company merged with Smith and Jones Consulting in 2008?" Choo Ch oose se topi topics cs that that in inte tere rest st yo your ur st stud uden ents ts.. The The best best way way to do that that is to as ask k the the students to give you the topics and to prepare a range of questions with answers for homework. This way you can obtain interesting questions that are highly relevant to your group without being an expert in the topic yourself. Collect in a host of questions from the students and make a selection from them for the actual game. Questions can be created to fit the level of your class. A beginner's grammar question might be something like, "Is the word "run" a noun or a verb?" (Answer: both) or "I run, he

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… / they …" or "Present tense: We go to the cinema. Future tense? (Answer: We will go to the cinema, or, we are going to the cinema later)" You can also make questions with vocabulary asking for spelling, definitions or asking the student to use the word in a sentence. In an advanced adult class you might want to include cultural questions, such as polite greetings and responses, or how to answer the phone. The important thing is that the questions should be based on topics already covered in class. This will ensure that students are familiar with the answers needed. Now write each of your quiz categories on five cards to go across the top of the board.  You will not want to tape these down to make it easier to change them later. Use something that sticks but that can be removed without tearing or damaging the cards. Print out or write up the students' or your own questions onto cards and place one question quest ion in each of the twenty-five twenty-five envelopes envelopes on the Jeopardy board. The more difficult difficult the question, the more points it is worth. Place the question cards in the appropriate envelope pockets.   How to play  This game can be played with as few as 2 people and as many as 20. With 2-4 students they can play individually, otherwise put the students into teams of three or four and allow them to take turns selecting their questions. The teacher may decide who goes first. first. The first first studen studentt select selects s a catego category. ry. He or she must must answer answer the fir first st availa available ble question within the category. If he or she answers correctly, he or she earns the points as indicated on the envelope. If wrong another team may attempt to answer the question. If no one can answer the question correctly then the teacher explains the answer and no one gets the points. Variation 1: Allow students to pick from any pocket on the board. They may choose harder questions worth more points earlier in this case. This will affect strategy and may encourage more discussion among team members about the best way to proceed. If your students work well together this is a good alternative.   Variation 2: You can also play this game in the same way as the original Jeopardy: put the answer on the card and have the students phrase the question that fits it. A great way to practice question format, but it works best with a higher-level group. The winner is the team with the most points once all the questions are answered. Jigsaw Listening

 

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Category: Step 4 Listening Fluency Group size: Divide class into small groups Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: An audio recording or a passage to read out plus the same passage written down and chopped up Preparation: One copy of passage you will work with chopped up per group Variation 1: Give students the jumbled sentences of a reading passage. For beginners chop cho p the se sente ntence nces s up whole whole and for more advanc advanced ed stu studen dents ts cho chop p the senten sentences ces randomly. One strip of paper may include the end of one sentence and the start of another. Let students listen in groups to the passage read out at normal speed and work out the order of the sentences. Tell students they will only be able to hear the passage three times. Variation 2: Play as in variation 1 above but give each student one strip of paper that he or she is responsible for inserting into the order. Students cannot show their paper to others, as this has to be done through listening alone rather than working out the order through reading all the pieces of the puzzle. Jigsaw Reading

Category: Reading Group size: Divide class into small groups

 

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Level: All levels; good for multilevel classrooms Materials: Chopped up text Preparation: One copy of passage you will work with chopped up per group  Jigsaw reading is quick to prepare. You You simply select a reading reading,, pre-teach the vocabulary and grammar, preferably with games, and divide the reading into parts. Each student reads their part of the article or story silently to themselves. Advanced students should be given longer and more challenging passages, and lower level students the short, simpler parts. After reading, you can have the student either write a summary of the article or story, or give it orally. Finally, working together, the students try to reconstruct the article in the correct order, and check it against the original article. Joker

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Divide class into small groups Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Playing cards and questions for the students to answer. Preparation: Prepare one set of questions per group Deal out half a pack of playing cards including the jokers to a small group of up to six students. stud ents. The players players must not look at their cards but place them face dow down n on the table. Ask player one a question. Player one answers and turns over a playing card from his or her pile. If the answer is correct the card is taken out of the game. If the answer is incorrect the card is placed in a pile in the centre of the group. Continue by asking the next student a question. When the joker turns up the person who turned it over must collect all the discarded cards from the pile in the middle, UNLESS he or she has answers his question correctly, in which case the joker is taken out of the game. You may like to add in a couple of extra jokers from another pack. If you have six students or less you can play as described above. With a larger class split the students into groups and either give a set of questions on a sheet of A4 to each group leader, who takes the questions in order, or print out the questions on card and chop up in advance. The teacher circulates and helps out where needed. Language Ideas Use any question forms you like. Use the same question form over and over for a simple level or mix up various types of questions for revision games or for more advanced levels. Jokes

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Any Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: Jokes Materials:  Jokes such  such as those at the end of this book, and those your students give you. Preparation: Ask each student to submit a few jokes to you for homework and use those in class for this activity. Explain to the students that this is a speaking fluency activity by telling short stories, because jokes are really stories. Distribute one joke to each student and let students read their joke and rehearse saying it in their heads a few times over until they have it memorized. Ideally have a different joke per student. When students are ready collect the jokes back in, let them pair up and tell each other their jokes. Every minute or two, depending depending on the length of jokes you have handed out, students swap partners. At the end you can ask students which jokes were actually funny and see if anyone wants to translate a joke from their own language.

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Games L-M Last Card

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Group size: Divide class into small groups of 3 to 4 students Materials: A large quantity of small picture or word flashcards Preparation: None Each group has a stack of about 15 flashcards, which are laid out in a grid. Rows can be uneven and contain any number of cards. You may have the first row with 4 cards, the second with 3 the third with 5, the fourth with 2 and so on. Cards are face up. Students may remove any number of cards from a given row per turn. To remove a card the student has to name the vocabulary (use picture flashcards) or use a sentence with the word in, (use picture or word flashcards). The sentence may be a fixed structure for a grammar drill or a freer choice of sentence for more of a fluency type of game. The player who takes the last card loses. For complete beginners you can play this with the alphabet and the player who takes the Z loses. Equally you can play with numbers and designate which number will be the losing number at the start of the game. Lego Negotiations

 

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 This game was developed from a game using ingredients, and it i t can still be played that way as a variation. The general object of the game is to collect all the items you need to complete a project: in this case a figure made of Legos, or tan grams. The language object obj ective ive is to develo develop p negoti negotiati ation on langua language ge at whatev whatever er level level is suitab suitable le for you yourr students. Materials Either use 'Lego', tan grams (geometric shapes cut in card or foam), or blocks. Pictures of the finished designs made with the available shapes, one for each group. •

•

Preparation Initial preparation time is 30 to 60 minutes, but once done, you don't have to do it again. Collect your Lego or blocks, or cut out your tan grams. Make sure you have enough so that each group in your class can construct a design. You need a picture of the finished design. How to play Variation 1 Go fishing for pieces – in this version the language is very simple: Do you have a  __(colour)_ __(shape)__? 1. Pre-teach the language needed, and practice the sentence starters as a group. 2. Distribute the pieces among the groups, three students in a group. 3. Hand out the picture of the design that the group has to build. 4. The students take turns asking other groups for certain pieces that they need to complete their design. 5. If a group has the piece asked asked for, they must give it up. If they don't have it, then the next group gets a turn to ask someone. 6. First group to complete their design is the winner.

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Variation 2  The language objective becomes more complex, as does the strategy: Do you have a  __(colour)_ __(shape)__? Yes/no/ May I have it? I will give you the __(colour)_ __(shape)__, if you can give me a ___________  ____________. 1. Pre-teach the language needed, and practice the sentence starters as a group. 2. Distribute the pieces among the groups, three students in a group. 3. Hand out the picture of the design that the group has to build. 4. The students take turns asking other groups for certain pieces that they need to complete their design. 5. If the group has a piece another group needs, then they have to negotiate and trade for it. 6. If the group doesn't have a piece the other group wants, then they can try to trade with another group to get it. 7. It is best to keep the groups separate enough that the negotiations can't be easily overheard. A note on language  You can change the language to make it more or less formal. It's a good idea to play that game at different levels of formality, especially with business English students. It helps to point out the contrast between: "Will you give me the red triangle, please?" And, "Would you be interested in exchanging this blue square for the red triangle?"   And, "I understand you have been looking for a blue square. I have one on hand, if you would be interested in trading that red triangle for it."  The key to this game's effectiveness is to pre-teach the sentence starter and practice it a few times before before the game. With beginners beginners and intermedia intermediates tes use a game like Relay Relay Race to drill the negotiation sentences to be sure they are fluent before playing. Lyrics and Songs – Nine Ideas for Using Songs in Class

 

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Category: Step 4 Fluency Listening and Optional Step 6 Creative Writing Level: Beginner to Upper Intermediate Group size: Any class size Materials: A song and optional lyrics sheet written out with gaps Preparation: Selecting a suitable song and putting the lyrics in a word document so you can edit them for the activities below. There are websites with words already typed up that you can copy and paste. Find a good song with lyrics suitable for your class level. With beginners you can use a pop song and just take the chorus if the verses are are too difficult. Look for songs songs that are decent in terms of content at medium tempo. Slow songs can be hard to understand and you do not want the class sitting around during lots of 'ooohs' and 'ahhhs'. Avoid songs with instrumental solos so as not to waste valuable class time. Avoid rap, which is usually to too o fast fast and incom incompre prehen hensib sible le even even to native native spe speake akers, rs, not to men mentio tion n pol politi itical cally ly incorrect. List Listen enin ing g – Cl Cloz oze e Pass Passag ages: es: The The st stud uden ents ts li list sten en to the the so song ng and and fill fill in the the gaps gaps.. www.lyrics.com has  has videos and lyrics that you can copy and paste into word so you can www.lyrics.com easily make your gap-fill.

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Listening: Students listen and write out the lyrics themselves as a dictation. If doing this it is recommended to have them work in pairs or small groups to help each other out. Listening: Let students listen to the song once or twice and then get together in groups and tell the story of the song, or write it out in note form. American Country songs are good for this as they usually have a story. Listening: Give students the lyrics in jumbled sentences. Let students listen in groups and work out the sentences. Listening – Jigsaw Listening: Give students all the song lyrics on pieces of paper, one line of lyrics per paper. Play the song twice and let students reorder the sentences. A variant of this is that students cannot show their lyrics to the others and it all has to be done through listening and not through reading all the lyrics. Listening: Let students listen to a song and count up the number of times certain words are used, or the superlative form or how many adjectives they hear, and so on. Discussion: Discussio n: Play a song to the stude students nts once or twice and then discuss it. What is the song about? Is the singer right? Would you feel the same way? What would you do in this situation? If you have a large class let students discuss questions you provide in groups. Let students come up with their own questions to ask about the song to ask each other. Cr Crea eati tive ve Writi Writing ng:: Have Have the the st stud uden ents ts make make up anot anothe herr ve vers rse e or ch chor orus us an and d if yo your ur students are willing they can even even sing it to the others. If they do not want to sing just let them read it out. Most adults are pretty s self-conscious elf-conscious when it comes comes to singing in front of others, but they might join in if singing in a group. Creative Writing: Use a familiar tune and let students put lyrics to it from your textbook or current vocabulary and grammar. For example take a Beatles tune or well-known movie tune and put day-to-day language to it. For example take the Beatles tune "Love Love Love". Students get together in groups and write new words based on describing their day. "Brush brush brush, wash wash wash, brush brush brush, it's easy! Every day I brush my teeth. Every day I wash my face. Every day I put on my clothes, it's easy! All you need is a sink! da da da da. All you need is some soap, da da da da. All you need are some clothes, yeah, that is all you need." It's a bit of fun and quite creative and useful. Mad Libs

 

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Category: Parts of speech review and Step 4 Listening for Fluency Group size: 1 or more divided into groups of up to 10 per group Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: A sheet of paper with a passage with blanks to fill in Preparation: None with the store bought version or make your own  This game is based on a popular American game. It takes some preparation initially but can be played with minimal resources. Use it to review parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and so on.   Make a gap fill from any textbook, book or make one up. Decide what parts of speech you want to review and delete them out of the passage, making a note of what part of speech it was. Make the blanks big enough to write in later. You can use a current reading passage from your textbook, a short story, or a text covered a few weeks ago that you wantt to review wan review.. An easy way to do thi this s is to photocop photocopy y the writ written ten page page and use a whitener to paint over the words you want to delete. If you take a scan of that page (or copy it again) you will have a blank template to use for future classes. How to play: Hold the paper with the reading and the blanks and do not let the students see it. Explain to the students that you are going to ask them for different parts of speech and they need to give you a word that is a good example of this. You might need to give an example or go over the the different parts of speech. Ask a student for a word by saying, saying,

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"Give me an example of a noun/verb/adjective/adverb/etc." Write down the student's response in the relevant blank but don't read anything yet. Continue around the room until all the blanks in the entire story are completed with alternative words. Now read the story out loud, generally to much laughter. This works well when you use a familiar text. Since you keep the title of the text a secret, it won't affect the outcome of the game. Variation 1 Allow students to work in teams and award points for words that fit the part of speech you asked for. In this case the winner has the most points. Variation 2 Have a student take your role, ask for the parts of speech and read the story at the end. Variation 3 Have students vote on the funniest sentence from the story. Compare it with the original and discuss the differences. Variation 4 Studen Stu dents ts wri write te out a number number of senten sentences ces and delete delete the requir required ed par partt of spe speech ech.. Students then swap papers over and circulate in class asking other students for a part of speech to go in each gap. Once all the sentences sentences are complet completed ed students get into g groups roups and read through through all the sentences. sentences. Any group with the most sentenc sentences es that actually actually make sense, sense, as opposed opposed to being nonsense, nonsense, wins. This could could cause some lively lively debate about what is nonsense and what is not. Magic Wand

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Divide the class into small groups Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the topics students will comment on Language point: Future tense / conditionals / modals  You have just found a magic wand that allows you to change three things in your life, your job, your school, your town, or whatever you decide. You can change anything you want. How would you change yourself, your school, your job or the town? Have students discus dis cuss s why they they feel feel the change changes s are import important ant.. Ano Anothe therr variat variation ion is to hav have e them them discuss what they would change if they become the headmaster, the boss or prime minister for a month. Make A Sentence Or A Question

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: 2 players to a class Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: None How to Play Divide your group into teams and call a word out loud, or have a class member do it. The teams race to come up with a sentence or question containing that word. The other team decides if it is correct. Teams earn points for producing correct sentences and also for marking them correctly. Do this orally as writing will slow the whole thing down. Use time limits to keep the pace moving. If you notice that one team is way ahead move some of the better students over to the other team to even things out. To avoid one student giving all the answers say one answer per student and let the better students help the others out if they need it. Language Ideas

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 You can use English in a general way or be specific about what you drill. To focus in on a specific linguistic structure specify that the sentence must be in a certain tense, or using a certain phrase. This game is adaptable to any language at all and is useful for drilling in new structures or ironing out consistent errors. Here is a simple version and a complex one: Beginner's example  You can name different foods and the students make up sentences or questions about whether they like or dislike them. Or hold up a picture or word and say "sentence" or "question". The class or team must come up with something. For example you hold up a picture of the word "ice-cream" and then say, "Question". The students must think of a question with that word in it such as: "Do you like ice-cream?" "Can I have some icecream please?" or, "Is there any ice-cream?" Intermediate to Advanced example  To practise if + past perfect with the perfect conditional you could say the sentence must contain a phrase such as If I had wanted.   If the word named is M O T H E R the player makes up a sentence such as "If I had wanted mother to do it I would have asked her". If the word named is P A N C A K E a sentence could be: "If I had wanted pancake I would have asked for it". If the word named is T I G E R a sentence could be "If I had wanted to see a tiger I would have gone to India". And so on. Making Up Stories

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency and Writing Group size: Divide the class into small groups Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Choose your opening story line, final line or random words that must be included in the story How to Play Put your class into small groups, the smaller the better, and have them make up a story which you can ask them to write up as they go - using a series of random pictures or words. wor ds. You may choose choose to instru instruct ct st stude udents nts to make make the story plausi plausible ble despit despite e the disparate elements they must draw from to write it. They will enjoy the challenge of making up a story using their imaginations, rather than following the often dull and obvious story lines of picture composition prompts provided in textbooks of old.  You may wish to give the opening line, or a final line, l ine, or a certain number of words that must be included in the story to stimulate the students' imaginations. Examples of opening lines might be: 1. He should never have gone there. 2. I peered into the dark hole. (Simple past) 3. Today is the most important day of my life. (Present tense and future) Examples of closing lines might be: 1. There was nothing for me to do but cry. 2. Luckily I still had the coin in my pocket. For lower intermediates provide easier sentences such as 1. It's a fish. 2. Today I take the train to London. And so on. Language and Marking  You may need to encourage intermediate students to keep it simple, as the temptation is to try to write an incredible story when the language and grammar is not there yet to do so. You may want to give them the tense the story takes place in - for example it was yesterday, it is happening now, or it is someone telling the story of what they plan to do in the future. Once they have written up the story have them all swap stories and read each other's each group must correct any language mistakes they see by writing out the correct

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version beneath the story. Each time the story is passed to another group they add any correc cor rectio tions ns they they feel feel necess necessary ary.. As far as the correc correctio tions ns go you may have severa severall versions offered and you can then go through with the class reading out the different versions and having the class say which one is correct.  You won't need to read out all the stories stories as the class will have read each o others thers (or some of them at least) least),, and dependin depending g on your class class size you might might not want to correc correctt absolutely everything in this way. Having the class participating in the marking of work makes them focus on the details such as verb endings and those little prepositions that are so often wrong. It is a great exercise in awareness, and saves you marking 30 odd stories to boot! You can always make yourself available to individuals who may want to clarify things with you as a result of this exercise. If you cannot stay for a few minutes after class you can see people individually briefly while the rest of the class do a written task or some group work. Marooned

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Split class into groups Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the scenario that will be discussed. Divide your class into teams. Your students are marooned on an island. What five or six items would they bring with them and why? Let students discuss these items and come to a consensus as a group about which five items they would bring. (5 items per team not per person) Then pair students from different groups so they can compare what another group has chosen to take and why. Use this idea again during different lessons to discuss other subjects such as: If If If If

you could only listen to one type of music which would it be and why? you could bring an animal on your desert island which one would it be? you could bring five types of food with you which would they be and why? you change four things about your life what would they be and why?

Match Up

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill or Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Small group to a class Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Pictures or words on pieces of paper Preparation: Prepare a list of matching items  Think up pairs of words that go together, such as hair and hairbrush and have either a picture of hair and another picture of a hairbrush, or two word flashcards with one word on each. each. Shuffle and hand out one card per player in your group or class. class. Players must must keep their card hidden and find their other half by walking about the classroom asking the other students. Showing your card or word to another student is cheating; it must all be done verbally. With the complete complete beginners beginners give out identical pairs of pictures so they can match dog with with do dog, g, ra rath ther er than than dog dog with with bone bone or bask basket et.. This This al allo lows ws yo you u to work work on basi basic c vocabulary. Players can just name the item that they have and see if it matches the other player's item. Or players can ask a simple question such as "What have you got?" They reply, "I've got a book". For an intermediate version players can say one sentence about their item as a clue, for example "You use it to do your hair." Each student goes round saying their sentence to the other players until they find their partner.

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For the advanced version players must guess whether the other item matches theirs by asking questions about it and they are not allowed to name their item. Miming is not allowed. Students must talk about the item they have and then listen to the other person describe his or her item and see if there is a match.    You can match up professions with tools needed for a certain job such as doctor with stethoscope, pliers with electrician, button with seamstress, megaphone with film director (somewhat more cryptic!) and so on. Use with the riddles, jokes jokes and metaphors metaphors at the end of this book. Split the metaphor in half. Split the riddle into the statement statement and the answer. Separate the punch line part part of the joke. Add some excitement to the game game by specifying that the first 5 peo people ple to find a match are winners and after that the game stops. Match Up Grid

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Small group to a class Level: Beginner Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the topic you will use for the drill How to Play Ask your students to each write down their favourite musician or band. Collect in the slips of paper and then read them out to the class. The students write each one down on a separate line. They then go around the class asking each other: "Who is your favourite musician?" and writing the name by the musician in question. If you have a class of thirty you would not want to dictate thirty items so just dictate ten and let the students find out who the ten people people are who match those those musicians. musicians. Allow a time limit limit for the task to keep the pace moving. Language ideas for this game Aside from a favourite musician use topics the students are interested in. These might be a favourite place to take a holiday, a favourite hobby or food dish or novel. Memory Challenge

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill/Fluency Group size: Any, working in pairs Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Class board Preparation: Decide on the information information you will write in the grid or have students prepare something for homework  The teacher writes up some information in a grid on the board. While the teacher is doing this, the students are reading and attempting to memorize the information. An example of a grid for beginners to talk about people would be to put names down the left hand side of the board and characteristics across the top. For example:  John, Married to Sylvia, works as an engineer, likes tennis and dancing, dislikes rock climbing Mary, single, unemployed, likes watching soap operas, dislikes getting up early Sylvia, married to John, works as a nurse, and so on. Next bring a student up to the front and have him face the class so he cannot see the board. Ask him questions about the content on the board such as, "Is John married? What's Sylvia's job?" and so on. The student answers from memory as best he can. Let the class ask a couple of questions. Now everyone knows what to do divide the class into

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pairs or very small groups and let them continue to play, swapping over the person who answers the questions without looking at the board every five questions.  This idea can be used to work on different tenses or grammatical points. For example use headers in the grid that refer to the past or the future such as what the person did yesterday, what they are doing later today, how long have they done a certain hobby or  job, what they would do if they could could do any job in the world, and so on on.. Use this same idea to test interesting content and not just dull invented facts about imaginary people. The above examples about people will be more interesting to the class if you use the class members or pop stars or famous people as subjects on the board. Another idea is to use trivial pursuit type questions and write up facts and figures on the board on general knowledge or on themes. For example you might write up facts about different movies, when they were made, who starred in them, the budget to make them and the amount they grossed at the box office. Or you might write up world records, facts about abo ut the body and biograph biographies ies of famous famous busine businessm ssmen en suc such h as Henry Henry Ford Ford or the Kentuc Ken tucky ky Fried Fried Chick Chicken en man Colone Colonell Sander Sanders. s. Us Use e themes themes that that are of intere interest st and relevant to your students needs. You can set the fact finding for homework for your students and give each student a topic to research, then use their homework for this game in class. Most adults will find it considerably more fulfilling this way because they will be learning new information and testing their memory skills as well as practising their English. Write up your facts such as Bombay is the largest city in the world with a population of 14 million people. Elicit questions as part of the demonstration such as "What is the largest city in the world?" and "What is the population of the largest city in the world" or "How many people live in Bombay?" Then do the pair work memory game. Too few facts and the game will be too easy. With beginners put up similar types of facts so the question forms will not be too diverse. To make this a drill put up identical types of facts so that students drill the same question form each time. Mind Mapping

Category: Vocabulary game Group size: Any class size Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None A beginner's mind map might look like this:

 

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Each student starts with a blank piece of paper. In the centre of that paper they write something down. This can be a noun, adjective or short sentence. If you have the time you can ask students to illustrate the word or sentence briefly with a small sketch. Next students swap papers with someone. Now students draw a spoke out from the central item and add something that they feel is associated. Papers are passed. This process continues until the mind maps are filled up. If you are allowed by the institution, you can display these around the walls for students to browse in between classes or when collecting before class. This activity helps students remember vocabulary because they associate it to other words. Another way to mind map Another map might be as follows. follows. The teacher teacher starts starts by drawing drawing a mind map, which which could be of his his or her life. So it might have have the teacher teacher in the middle, middle, then stick figures for family members, or friends, or pets, the work place and other elements of the teacher's life outside of work – holidays, hobbies, home and garden, likes, dislikes, sports spo rts and so on. Studen Students ts then ask questio questions ns about about the map to under understa stand nd all the symbols. Then let students do this with each each other in pairs. pairs. Mine Sweep

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill. Vocabulary and short sentence practice Group size: Divide class into small groups of 6 maximum Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Picture or word flashcards Preparation: None Divide the class into small groups of 4 to 6 players. Each group has two teams or 2 or 3 players each. Give a pack of picture or word flashcards to each group. Designate one word or picture to be the mine. If you are teaching students who might be upset by the idea of mines change the name of the game and use a burst balloon idea instead of a mine. The first student turns over a card in the pack rapidly and names the vocabulary item or says a short short sentence with the word in it. The sentence sentence must be correct correct and the other team are responsible for picking up any errors. If correct the student keeps the card for his or her team equalling one point. An error means no point.  The game continues like this until a student picks out a mine card. This means that team have to give up three of their cards, which are returned to the main pack at the bottom or taken out of the game, as you prefer. When the pack is finished students can count up the team points and see who won if they like. Use picture cards with beginners or when practising vocabulary. Word cards are fine to use for revising spelling of known vocabulary and when making sentences. Movies – Using Previews and Excerpts in Class

 

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Category: Listening and Speaking Fluency Group size: Any Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: The ability to show movies or clips in class Preparation: Selecting suitable previews or picking out quotes from movies Showing a long movie during class time is not constructive because watching a film is something students can do in their free time. If you survey your class you will probably find that students do not want to be stuck in front of a film during class time either, unless unles s the teacher teacher has the same people for eight hours a day on some kind of intensive course and everyone needs needs a break. Having said that movies can can be used constructively and are brilliant learning tools. If you can loan suitable films out to your students that they can watch outside of class time, preferably without subtitles, that benefits them hugely as watching movies gives exposure to natural language in a non-threatening environment. environment. If you cannot cannot find films

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without subtitles urge your students not to use them, or to put the subtitles up in English, as that can help comprehension and it keeps the students thinking in English rather than in their own language. Films also provide something for students of all cultures to talk about. Needless to say one should be cautious when selecting films to recommend or use in class. While no one bats an eyelid at partial nudity in the States it is seen as shocking and disgusting in many other other countries. Many of of the film adaptations adaptations from from classic classic literature are suitable as they contain neither swearing nor nudity and very little violence, if any. Examples are Dickens Dickens adaptatio adaptations, ns, Jane Austin or the Bronte Bronte sisters' novels. novels. Walt Disney cartoons will generally be a safe bet too. Movie Game

– Guess the Dialogues

 

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In class you can use movies usefully by showing excerpts. Show a video clip or excerpt without sound and let students guess what the dialogues are about. Then have students make up their own dialogues in pairs, or in groups corresponding to the amount of people talking in the clip. Movie Game 2 – Role Play the Dialogues

 

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Students listen to the audio track of a movie excerpt and then in groups act this out as a role-play. The groups perform their versions to the class before watching the actual clip with wit h its origina originall sound sound tra track. ck. This activity activity is best best if you hand out the script script fir first st so students can learn their words for homework and come back to class to rehearse and perform. Movie Game 3 – Preview Game

 

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Show a preview to a movie and let the class members write up in note form what they think happens in that film. For lower levels show the film with sound. For intermediates show the film without sound and for advanced students let them hear the sound but not see the picture. Students can discuss potential movie plots and outcomes in groups and then present their version to the class. Finish by watching the preview again and then if you have it, by showing the actual last few minutes of the film itself. Movie Game 4 – Work Out The Plot

 

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Show the opening two or three minutes or a film. Sometimes a film has a series of scenes that occur before the credits roll and you can show that. Next jump forward to the next chapter and show ten to twenty seconds of that and do this for up to five chapters. Students then get together in pairs to work out the plot of the movie together. Once most students have finished this task put them into groups of four and let each pair tell the other pair their version and choose a plot and an outcome to present to the rest of the class. If time the class can vote on which summary they think is the best. Finish by showing the last 2 or 3 minutes of the film so students have resolution, or, make the film available for students to borrow and watch in their free time. Vary the difficulty of the activity by showing only the picture with no sound or just the sound with no picture. Movie Game 5 – Using Previews for Discussion

 

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Show your students a selection of three to five previews. Put the students in pairs to discuss which film they they would like to see see in full and why. To encourage more more talking ask students stud ents to list the three three films in order of prefere preference, nce, saying saying why each time. Students Students can also try to convince their partner to come and see the film of their choice by telling them what it's about and why they think it would be good.   Movie Game 6 – Directors and Ticket Buyers

 

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Using the idea in the game Persuasion in this book have students watch a movie from a

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selection of films for homework. Offer a choice of five films and insist if possible that the films be watched in English without subtitles or at least with English subtitles. If this is not practical for you then ask the class to think of some movies they have seen. Take these films and make 5 students film directors who have to sell tickets for their film. The students listen in groups to the directors and ask questions about the film if necessary. Each group of students visits each director for a few minutes. Then individuals decide which film they would go and see based on what they have learned about the films from the directors. At the end count up and see which director managed to sell the most tickets. It is better if not all students have seen all the movies. This way the directors have more reason to talk about and describe their film. You might find that picking some of the films just released works well as not all students will have been to see them. This is better than picking a well-known classic film that almost everyone has already seen. Movie Game 7 – Listening for Quotes

 

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Play some movie previews and give students a list of quotes in random order from the previews. Students listen and write the film title by the quote. Alternatively show five minutes of a film with dense dialogues. Provide a list of quotes from a clip. Show the clip again and while listening students identify who says which of each of the quotes. Use a clip taken from any part of a film that contains several characters and plenty of dialogue. Films that have been made from plays are full of suitable material for this activity. Movie Game 8 – Match the Title to the Film

 

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Write up a series of titles on the board, perhaps ten to fifteen movie titles. Show three previews and ask students to decide in pairs which titles from the board go with the previe pre views ws and why. why. Studen Students ts then then presen presentt their their argume argument nt to oth other er studen students ts in small small groups explaining why they have decided to match a certain title to a preview. Specify that to prevent one student from doing all the speaking everyone in the group must say something and there is a rule that if a student has explained the match for one film he or she cannot do it for a second one, someone else must take over. Finally Fina lly have a vote and see what the class outcome outcome is, and then give the actual titles to the three previews. Movie Game 9 – Watchers and Listeners

 

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Divide the class in half and send half of them out with 15 to 20 key words from five prev previe iews ws,, whic which h yo you u prep prepar are e befo before reha hand nd.. Thes These e st stud uden ents ts ar are e to ma make ke su sure re they they unders und erstan tand d all of the vocabul vocabulary ary words and look look them them up in the dictiona dictionary ry if not not.. Meanwhile play the five previews to the students in the room without sound. Then send these "watchers" out of the room to discuss in pairs what the plots of the five movies are about and what they think happens at the end. Meanwhile the "listeners" come back into the room. Play the five previews to them with no picture and only with sound. Allow a few minutes for students to get together in pairs and decide what the five movies are about. Now bring in the watchers and put one watcher with one listener in pairs. Let them take turns in describing the movies that they either heard or saw to each other and between them decide on a title for each of the movies. If time, play the previews again with sound and pictures so the students can assess the accuracy of their summaries.

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Mystery Game

 

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Category: Speaking Fluency Group size: Divide class into small groups Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: Objects and a bag Preparation: None  Tell students this is a speaking fluency activity through describing things, which also leads to vocabulary expansion. Place a mystery object in a bag and give it to a student to feel and describe. The class listen to the description and try to guess the object inside the bag. Intermediate students will find this quite difficult as a large amount of vocabulary is needed for the task. You might do two or three demonstrations in front of the class and then the n ask the studen students ts to go away away and prepare prepare by each each select selecting ing three three object objects s and looking up all the useful adjectives to describe that object. Students then bring their objects into class, hidden in bags, and you play again in small groups, one mystery bag per group with students taking it in turns to describe the object. Students describing the object should not know what it is so the teacher can hold all the objects at the front, hidden, and swap over objects in the bags without the students watching.  The winners can be the students students who bring in objects that nobod nobody y can guess.

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Games N-P Name The Thing

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Any size class working in pairs or small groups Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: Pictures which students can prepare Preparation: None Name the Thing requires picture cards. Have the students work in pairs, and lay out for each pair a set of three or four pictures of similar, but not identical items, such as four similar cars. One person holds a matching picture of one of the items displayed on the table, and uses this as a reference for answering questions asked by the other students.  These students ask ask questions to narrow down their ch choices oices and pick the correct mat matching ching picture. The more advanced students students can do the questioning, as this is harder than coming up with answers. A tip for this game is to first de demonstrate monstrate it at the front o off the class and then ask students to each collect a set of pictures for the game to play at the next lesson. The teacher can then then keep the best of those sets sets for future use. No Yes Or No

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill - Good for questions and short form answers Group size: Small groups Level: High Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Think of the topics students will ask questions on and prepare examples One student comes up into the "hot seat" at the front of the class. The other students keep up a barrage of questions to the student at the front who must answer them without using "yes" or "no". The minute the student in the hot seat accidentally lets slip a "yes" or a "no" or makes an error they must give their place up to someone else. This encourages the use of short form answers such as "I do" instead of "yes" or "I haven't" instead of "no". Review short form answers before playing by brainstorming with the class. Point out that the correct short form answer is contained in the question. "Have you been to Paris? I have/I have not. Did you see a movie? I did/I did not. Could you eat the whole steak? I could/I could not." And so on.  This game is excellent for practising questions. questions. With beginners students can stick to basic questions, which can be highly repetitive such as: Do you like jam? I do. Do you like apples? I do. Do you like sugar? I do not. Etc. You may play in a freer way with more advanced students who have more language and vocabulary under their belts, or you may stick to playing with a specific question form in order to drill it thoroughly.  You may score points for each question answered correctly. Equally you may set a fixed time limit in the hot seat to ensure everyone has a turn and score points for all correct answers given during that time. Alternatively you do not need to keep score but just give each student a chance to answer a set number of questions. If you have too many students to do this then let 4 or 5 students have a turn and play again in another lesson with different people in the hot seat. Noughts and Crosses

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Pair work Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Pictures or questions written on the board or handed out Preparation: None

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Put the students in pairs. Each pair draws a grid for the game with three horizontal rows and three vertical rows, giving nine squares. This can be done by drawing four horizontal lines lines parall parallel el to each each other other and two vertical vertical lines, lines, which which cut through through the horiz horizont ontal al lines. The idea is to make a line of three noughts or three crosses. The line of three can be horizontal, diagonal or vertical.

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Demonstrate the game on the board first with two students. The players first decide who is a nought nought and who is a cross. cross. In order to place place a nought or a cross cross in the grid players players need to name some vocabulary or answer a sentence correctly. Hold up a picture, the student names it and if correct places his or her nought or cross. Continue until one of the players manages to form a line of three noughts or three crosses. To use more language students can make up a sentence or question containing the word and drill a specific question or sentence form. Old Maid

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Divide the class into small groups of 4 to 6 students Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: Pairs of cards, either pictures or words. Preparation: None Old Maid is a traditional card game where the aim is to avoid being the player left holding the old maid. If practising numbers play with a regular card deck and extract three queens from the pack. Deal out the remaining cards. Players sort through their cards taking out any pairs. Students must name the numbers in order to lay the pairs down on the table. The dealer then offers his hand to the student on his left. This player takes a card and if it makes up a pair with one of the cards in his hand he can lay that pair down. He then offers his hand to the next player and so on until one player is left holding the old maid, or queen. Language Ideas  To adapt this to diverse language possibilities use sets of picture flashcards instead of playing cards. Specify the sentence or target structure to work on and whenever players have a pair of matching pictures they can lay them down and must say the designated sentence using the vocabulary shown in the pictures. For complete beginners this may simply be naming the words or making a short sentence such as, "I like apples", if the picture represents apples. You may want the students to use questions, in which case an example is: "Do you like apples?" A more complex question example is: "Did you buy any apples?" apple s?" Adapt Adapt this game to your desired desired outcome outcome and provide provide pictures or words that are suitable. For intermediates play with a selection of word cards. Students must make sentences using the word on the card. You may specify the tense the sentences should be in or allow any type of sentence. Materials Each group of 6 students needs a set of picture cards. If you do not have anything suitable put up a list of 12 words on the board and ask each adult to quickly sketch one pair each. You want to provide blank cards, playing card size, for students to draw their

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sketches on. This allows you to have your materials made quickly and you can re-use these cards for many other games. Alternatively use word cards. Pairs

 

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Category: Reading and Speaking Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Prepare sentences beforehand on paper, chop in two and shuffle Preparation: Prepare the sentences you will use Write out some sentences you would like the class to work with. Chop them in two, then shuffle and distribute one half of a sentence to students. Give students a minute to memorise the words on their paper. Allow a time limit for students to circulate and find their pair through saying the line, no reading or showing the paper to other students. Use the same idea for proverbs, metaphors, riddles, jokes, expressions or lines of poetry or songs. Parts of Speech Path Finder

 

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 This game can be used as a grammar drill for specific sentence types or tenses and as a fluency fluen cy game game for general general language language.. Use the board board game game provided provided in Appendix Appendix II. You may want to enlarge it with a photocopier, stick it on cardboard and decorate it. Materials A game board with at least 25 or 30 spaces, each space coloured in one of four or five colours, four with traps (name these after grammatical errors), and three jump spots (name these after famous novels). Cards with the colours on them, as well as four trap cards and three jump ahead cards. 4-6 game pieces to move per board. A sheet providing the key for which colour stands for which part of speech. By using a key like this, you can easily change which parts of speech you practice in a game. You could concentrate on prepositions of place, prepositions of time, adjectives, nouns, etc. •

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Preparation Decide what parts of speech you want to practice and match each one to a colour. For example: Verbs – red, prepositions – yellow, etc. Draw the board and make the cards, if needed. Use buttons for the game pieces.

How to play 1. Player draws a card, and moves to the next space in that colour. 2. Player checks the colour of the card against the key, and sees w what hat part of speech it is. 3. To stay on that spot, the player must give a word that matches the part of speech, and then use it in a sentence. sentence. The next player can can throw the dice, move to to their square and pick up their card while while the previous p player layer is thinking up his or her sentence. This keeps the game game moving along. along. It is an idea to to put players players in pairs pairs to work togethe together. r. You can also set a time limit for the sentence to be produced, and if not correct, or not done in time, the player goes back two squares, or back to where he or she was at the start of that turn. 4. Players who draw the trap card must go to that trap and lose a turn. 5. Players who draw a jump card must go to the nearest jump spot, they don't lose a turn, but it could send them backwards depending on which jump spot it is. 6. To win the game, the player must land on the last space and then give a sentence using all the parts parts of speech speech practised practised in the game. If playin playing g with beginners beginners skip this step or simplify the requirement for the final square.

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Peer Editing

 

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Category: Reading and editing Level: Beginner to Advanced, good for mixed abilities Group size: Any class size Materials: None Preparation: None Similar to Buddy Reading, Peer Editing allows students to look at each other's work and make corrections and comments at their own levels. Pre-writing and rough drafts can be done independently. Advanced ESL students can be encouraged to write more and with greater grammatical complexity. Peer editing is then done as a last step before writing the final draft. Students can be encouraged to discuss content as well as grammar and punctuation. Personalisation

 

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Category: Writing and Speaking Drill Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any class size Materials: None Preparation: None When teaching a new grammatical structure it is useful to allow students to take this language and say something about themselves. So for example if you are teaching the condition cond itional al tense tense let students write up thre three e sentences sentences about themselves themselves using that tense tens e such as: If I won the lottery I would... would... If I could could take up a new hobby I would... If I could be anywhere in the world right now I would be...  You can either provide three set sentences or allow students to complete them or let students make up their own sentences entirely. Students write these up on paper hand them into you, you shuffle and distribute to the class. Everyone now guesses who said what by walking around the class asking questions. Persuasion

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking fluency Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any class size Materials: Optional fact sheets Preparation: Have students prepare for the game for homework using your chosen topic Students try to persuade other students to buy their product, vote for them, or take their point of view in pairs on a given topic. Sounds simple, however you may find students do not have much to say and the conversation is forced or fizzles out. If you give a reason for the students to speak and to listen you will find the conversation flows more readily. For example if you tell students to discuss their dream home you may find that many students do not have much to say and are not too motivated. The activity is likely to come com e to an end very soon. soon. Use this persua persuasio sion n tec techni hnique que to genera generate te a reaso reason n to communicate and stimulate stimulate the studen students. ts. You can discuss discuss any topic with this this activity. It is ideal for special subjects as it is for general language. Here is a detail Here detailed ed exa exampl mple e using using the to topic pic talkin talking g about about your your dream dream home. home. Fir First st brai brains nsto torm rm wi with th th the e cl clas ass s abou aboutt idea ideall fe feat atur ures es for for a dr drea eam m home home.. Wi With th lowe lowerr intermediates jot new vocabulary the class come up with as they call out their ideas. Specify the type of information that is needed such as location, proximity to services, environment, size, grounds, extra features such as pool or gym, parking, architectural style, whether modern or character and so on. Now either give out real estate information on several homes to half of the students who are estate agents, or let students prepare descriptions of their ideal home for homework.

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Once you have your dream home specifications, either because you have prepared them or the students students have done done so fo forr homewo homework, rk, split the class class into into est estat ate e agents agents and homebuyers. Homebuyers have a few minutes to interview three or four estate agents and choose a property from those on offer. Estate agents only have one or two houses in their portfolio portfolio which they are very keen to sell. House buyers buyers may visit several several estate agents with a time limit of a few minutes at each one before making their choice. See which estate agents make the most sales.  This is adaptable to many many topics. Here are a few examples: examples: Favourite holiday destination: Travel agents and customers Best product: Salesmen and customers Favourite day out: Tour guides and customers Food to be served in school canteen: Nutritionists and parents Which school for your child? Headmasters and parents Which job? Employers and Employees Which bank? Bank managers and customers (ideal for business English). Give the bank managers the task of choosing a bank and reading up on the terms for homework. The other students can prepare in a similar way with mortgages. In class cla ss see which which bank bank manage managers rs recrui recruitt the most most client clients s and which which mortga mortgage ge brokers make the most sales. Which party? Hosts describe what their party will be like and guests decide which party they want to go to Which political party? Party leaders describe their policies and voters decide whom to vote for. Allow for some outrageous parties such as the Monster Raving Loony • •

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Party from UK.views. Bews. sure students know they can take aty role rather expres exp ress s perso perthe sonal nal vie Have Hav e studen students ts each eac h prepar pre pare e a on party par man manife ifesto stothan for for homework that can be used in the pair work in class. Which pet? A pet lover tries to sell his idea of the best pet to a potential pet buyer. Which city tour? Tour guides try to recruit sightseers for their favourite city. Which country? Ambassadors try to attract immigrants to their country. If you have refugees or feel that this is too sensitive a topic for your class play with imaginary countries that have fantasy ideas such as free food for children and so on.

Red Pen/Blue Pen Persuasion Idea: A teacher gave me the greater greater part of this idea. Half class write down an an item they think is useful and give it a realistic realistic value using a RED pen. The other half write down down an item they think is useless and and give it a reasonable value using a BLUE pen. All students fold papers, stand up and mill around class - everyone MUST swap their paper three times in the space of one minute!  The students with items in RED each have an item which they MUST sell, and they MUST get as much as possible possible for the item, because they des desperately perately need the money. The other half have a fake item which they are trying to sell to get money, but it's worthless. Start the clock: students have the obligation to sell an item and buy one before the time stops - tell them it's about 5 minutes but you are not saying exactly when the time will run out. Students go around class talking talking to the others to see wha whatt they have, how much it is, whether they want it. The idea is not to get stuck with an item in blue when the time is up. Anyone who has neither sold sold nor bought an item when time is up is als also o a loser, as if they had a blue item. Pictionary

Category: Step 2 Vocabulary Speaking Drill Group size: Any size Level: Beginner Materials: None Preparation: None

 

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 This is a useful vocabulary revision game for beginners. Play for 5 minutes as a break in between something more intense. Regular review of vocabulary the students are learning helps them remember and it does not take much time out of a class. Rather than having students draw random objects focus on vocabulary introduced during the previous lesson.  This will mean students guess the words much quicker and the review activity feels more relevant to them as there is an obvious point to it, rather than randomness.  This is the classic Pictionary   game where one player draws an object and the other players have to be the first to guess what it is. This game works well in teams of ideally 6 players or so. If you have a large class it may be that you need to stop the game before everyone has had a go at drawing.  Team leaders come up and find out the thing they must draw. You can show a picture or the word. Team leaders then go back to their teams and draw this item as fast as possible. Once the item is named another team member comes up to you for the next item. You can either play for a limited time so winners have the most items guessed, or for a given number of pictures so winners finish first. No point can be scored if the vocabulary is not known in English of course. Picture Flashcards

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Small groups to large classes Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Pictures Preparation: None Have the class or group sit round in a circle if possible and pass a picture round. It could be a picture of a nurse, in which case each player takes the picture and says, "She's a nurse". Leave an interval of 3 players and pass a second picture round for example, "He's a diver". Each picture picture makes a complete complete circuit of the group with everyone everyone saying the required sentence, or just the word, as required. If students do not know the word they can ask someone next to them for help, but they cannot pass the picture on until they have named it out loud. If you are in a traditional classroom set up the students can remain at their desks and pass the pictures to each other up and down the aisles. Keep handing out pictures until yo you u have have one one pict pictur ure e to ever every y thre three e st stud uden ents ts so many many pict pictur ures es ar are e circ circul ulat atin ing g simultaneously. At various points during the game you can blow a whistle or give a signal and all those holding pictures must do a group forfeit, if this is not too silly for your group of course. See under Forfeits  for  for ideas. Picture Inspiration

 

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Category: Step 5 Fluency Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Divide the class into small groups Materials: None Preparation: Have some suitable pictures to use if students students do not bring any in and there are none in your textbook you can use Ask a student to bring in a picture that he or she knows something about, preferably something interesting such as a scene from a historical event, or something from the paper. pape r. For beginners beginners a photograph photograph of a family member member is appropriat appropriate e so students students can work with more basic questions such as: What is her name, how old is she, etc. A holiday photograph is good for practising the past simple and past continuous: Where did you go, what did you see, what were you doing, etc.

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With the students in groups each group looks at a picture and comes up with a selection of questions about it. Allow a minute or two for students to write down their questions and then let them ask these to the person who brought in the picture. Use one picture per group of ten students maximum. If you have several groups listen in at each group and note any recurring errors that you can go over afterwards. Variation  You may like to bring in pictures of people from magazines and write up a list of questions on the board to stimulate the students' imaginations. Give out one picture per student or pair of students and give them five or ten minutes to come up with a story aboutt the person abou person in the picture. With a small group you can then listen to all the stories stories but with a large group just let the students tell one or two others their story. Questions you might write up are: What is this person's name? What does he look like? What does he do? What hobbies does he have? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he happy? Does he like life? What secrets does he have? Does he have any pets? What is his daily life like? What is his ambition? What is he doing now? What will he be doing in five years? Ping Pong

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Best for small groups for maximum participation Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: None Ping Pong Ping Pong works works in the same same way as Rhymi Rhyming ng ping-pong ping-pong but there is no obligation for words to rhyme. Players form teams. Give a time limit for teams to write down as many words as possible in a given theme. When the time is up teams take it in turns to call out one word. The opposite team must hit back with a different word until the teams run out of new words. The winning team is the one that speaks last.  You may dispense with any writing and let teams play off the cuff. Use the writing option if you find your team are short of ideas and let the team brainstorm as a group together before a round. As with most of the games, this one is very adaptable. It is up to you to make the language and vocabulary as hard or as easy as you like. Use categories of words such as sports spo rts or food, food, or play with with short short senten sentences ces such as, as, "I' "I'm m Fre French nch,, I'm Spani Spanish, sh, I'm English". Population Punctuation

 

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Category: Step 3 Reading and Sentence Construction (excellent for grammar) Group size: Group work Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Words written out on pieces of paper, or have students do this Preparation: Decide on the sentences you will work with  This game is excellent for general language and also for focusing on a particular grammatical structure. Write out sentences using one card or paper per word. Include papers for punctuation such as commas and full stops. One member of the class or group does not have a word card and this student arranges the other students in order so as to form a correct sentence. This game suits students who learn through kinaesthetic or tactile learning styles. The movement also helps keep your students from dropping off during your class!  You may play with the whole class if it is fairly small or with the class divided into groups.  You can play to see who can make the longest correct sentence in a given time limit or give two groups the same sentence and have them race against each other to make up the correct sentence using all the words in the group.

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 This is a good game to play to work on the apostrophe. If you give out word cards, apostrophes and the plural endings 'ES' and 'S' as well as other punctuation you can play using sentences such as: "They went to the children's playground/the boy's playground. It's a long way to the Sahara. You can have the custard on its own." You say the sentence out loud and students have to make up the sentence with the elements they have and decide whether or not an apostrophe is needed. Even many of the English are confused about use of the apostrophe so time spent on it will not be wasted! Presentation

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: All class sizes Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Students prepare this for homework Students prepare this activity for homework. Students are to each prepare a presentation on a gi give ven n topi topic. c. Fo Forr best best re resu sult lts s allo allow w st stud uden ents ts to ch choo oose se thei theirr own own topi topics cs.. For For intermediates three minutes is long enough and you can go up to ten minutes or more with advanced students. If you have a small group presentations can be longer but with a large class you will have to keep them short or you will not have time to listen to them all during the course of a series of lessons, unless you split the class into small groups and yo you u circ circul ulat ate e and and ea eave vesd sdro rop p ra rand ndom omly ly.. Te Tell ll st stud uden ents ts they they ca cann nnot ot re read ad out out thei theirr presentation but must do it from memory using only bullet points as notes. This means students will have to rehearse delivering their talk in advance in order to achieve a degree of fluency and confidence. When commenting on presentations after delivery it is best to point out the things that the student handled well. Have other class members comment on what they liked. This is better than picking the presentation apart which is demoralising and can make the other students nervous about the idea of delivering their own presentation. Pointers for giving good presentations are: 1. Know your topic well 2. Tell the audience what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them, i.e. introduction, main content and summary. 3. Vary your tone and speed of speech 4. Make eye contact with the audience and seem confident 5. Speak clearly and at the beginning check the audience can hear you 6. Use an anecdote, story or metaphor to illustrate a point 7. Keep any visuals simple and colourful 8. Rehearse repeatedly in sections until you are confident Giving presentations is popular with business English students especially if the topics are business related. Present Perfect

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill/Fluency element possible Group size: Class work in small groups Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Decide what the "Have you ever" questions will be  This game is for the present perfect and past tense, particularly questions. Demonstrate first by bringing one student up to the front of the class. The student has to answer, "yes" to the first question and after that can answer whatever he or she likes. You ask the student a question such as "Have you ever eaten Tiramisu?" The student has to answer yes whether he or she has eaten it or not. Ask three more questions such as: "What are the ingredients? Where did you eat the Tiramisu? Did you like it?" Have a limit of three or

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four questions and let the class decide whether the student has in fact eaten Tiramisu or not. Now split the class into groups and let them play with a series of questions of their own. If your students cannot think of any questions of their own you will have to write some ideas on the board such as: "Have you ever been to Japan?" "Have you ever ridden an elephant?" and so on. It is better if students can think of their own questions and thus use the "Have you ever" structure from memory rather than just reading from the board. Problem Solving

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: All class sizes Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the problems students to discuss Give students a problem to solve and let them discuss how to go about it in small groups.  Then let a member from each group present the solution to the class and see what different solutions the class have come up with. For problem ideas ask your students for ideas and look in the media for current issues. There is no shortage of problems and they can be centred on any area of vocabulary that you want to study. Examples are: There is too much traffic traffic at rush hour. Graffiti Graffiti is a problem. Cheap Cheap housing can be depres depressing, sing, and so on. Punctuation

 

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Category: Step 3 Reading for Punctuation Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: Take a reading passage, remove all punctuation and give this to the students. Provide sentences or paragraphs to the class without punctuation. Let students punctuate sentences and see if they can give different versions of the same sentence where the meaning changes because of the punctuation. For example: A woma woman n wi with thou outt her her man man is noth nothin ing. g. A woma woman: n: wi with thou outt he her, r, ma man n is noth nothin ing. g. A pa pand nda a ea eats ts shoo shoots ts and and le leav aves es.. A pand panda a ea eats ts,, sh shoo oots ts and and le leav aves es.. (Lyn (Lynne ne Tr Trus uss, s, published by Profile books)  The following words without without punctuation give rise to three possibilities: possibilities: Run Paul Samuel said no 1. "Run!" Paul Samuel said. "No!" 2. "Run Paul! Samuel said no!" 3. "Run Paul!" Samuel said, "No". See also the longer tongue twisters that would be fun to punctuate. Give students sentences to punctuate with apostrophes such as: The judges decision is final. The grocers son did it. Mothers should know. Some mothers do have em. Childrens play ground. Childrens toys are on sale. sale. See also the game Population Population Punctuation. Pyramid

 

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 This can either be done as a quick game, or as a vocabulary-building project over a couple of classes, classes, depending on how you you want to handle the preparation. It can be used as a grammar drill in variation 2, or for speaking fluency and vocabulary in variation 1. Materials  Twenty index cards, ten pieces pieces of construction paper, ma markers rkers

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Preparation Come up with a minimum of 30 different topics that could head a category and at least ten words that fit each one to be sure that there are enough possible clues. Variation 1 In the class before the game, break the students into two groups and have each of them think up ten lists. How to play 1. Divide the class into two teams. Each team has ten cards with different categories on them made by the other team. Assign each category a certain number of points. You can make harder ones worth more. 2. Hand the first person on one team a card. This person turns to the next player on the team and tries to give clues about the category. category. The category cannot cannot be read out loud.  The player with the card has to think of things that belong on the lis listt to say as clues. 3. The pair has 30 seconds for the second player to guess the category. If they succeed, the player that guessed gets the next card, and turns to the third member of the team to give clues. This goes on until someone fails to guess the category in the 30-second time limit. Then play switches to the next team. An example round might be: Player 1: Poppy, Dandelion, Rose Player 2: Flowers! Player 1: Yes! 5. If you had the students make the categories up, it is important to make sure that the teams don't get the categories they made up themselves. 6. The team that gets through all their cards first gets to go to the challenge round. 7. Challenge Round – the winning team picks its best two players to get to the top of the pyramid in two - three minutes (depending on the level of play). The pyramid is set up with the construction paper stuck to the board in a pyramid shape: One on top, two on the next level, three on the next, and four squares of paper across the bottom. The easier categories are on the bottom, and they get more challenging as the players progress. The playerr that will guess sits with his or her back to the pyramid. The one to give clues sits playe facing the pyramid so that he or she can see each card as it is turned over. When one card is guessed, the next in the pyramid is turned over. If all the categories are guessed in the allotted time, award bonus points as well. It's a good idea to have some kind of prize for the pyramid round. Harder variation Students guess the specific word within the category Variation 2 Instead of categories with lists, make quiz questions on whatever information or grammar you want to drill. Use the time limit to get students to answer or pass as quickly as possible. Since they won't be guessing categories, they won't need as much time to answer, so cut it to 30 seconds for the regular round and one minute for the Challenge round.  To play with beginners make simple questions such as, "What is your name, where do you live" and so on. To drill in grammar the student with the card as asks: ks: "Where are you going at the weekend?" and the student answering must give any grammatically correct reply that fits the question. The challenge is to answer correctly correctly within the time time frame to make it to the final round.

Games Q-R

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Qualities

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Any size Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Think of a diverse range of jobs, or ask students in class. Ask students to prepare a paragraph on the qualities needed for a certain job, possibly for homework. Collect these in and use them for the activity.  This speaking activity deals with personal qualities, talents, skills, strengths and weaknesses. Take a list of jobs such as sales manager, typist, conservationist, shop owner, physical education teacher, university professor, banker, stock broker, part-time help at a school canteen, and so on. You may want to use some of the jobs your students have to personalise the activity, but make the jobs varied including indoor and outdoor, physic phy sical al and cerebral cerebral,, social social and solita solitary. ry. You need need half half as many many jobs jobs as you have have students so if you have thirty students students you need fifteen fifteen different jobs. Students come up with the qualities in pairs needed to perform those jobs well and the qualities or personal attributes that would be a problem. Have students write these things down on cards so each pair of students prepares two cards describing attributes for a specific job. Now seat the students in two rows facing each other. Each student holds a job attribute card and the pairs that worked together to create these cards should be split up. Those on one side are employers and those opposite are candidates. The employees have the qualit qua lities ies describe described d on their their card card but do not have to necess necessari arily ly take take that that job. job. The employer has to find a suitable candidate for the job on his or her card. Employers and candidates do not tell each other what the job is on their respective cards; they just interview each other and see if there is a match. Give a time limit and let candidates move along one seat so all the employers get to interview all the candidates, or allow a se sett amount amount of interv interview iews s af after ter which which employ employers ers must must make make a se selec lectio tion n from from tho those se interviewed.  There are umpteen ways you can vary this idea. For exa example: mple: Give out job cards in advance and do role-play interviews according to what is on the cards. Let Let stud studen ents ts desc descri ribe be what what they they ar are e good good at and and li like ke doin doing g an and d what what thei theirr weaknesses are and let other students suggest jobs to them as a careers guidance role play Students think of a job, describe the attributes needed for that job and let the other students guess the job - this can be done in teams with a time limit for guessing the job and points awarded to the teams for correct guesses. Students interview other students and choose someone in class to take over their current job. •

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Question and Answer

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Best in small groups Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: A ball Preparation: None One student with the ball throws it and asks a question. The player who catches the ball answers the question and throws the ball to someone else. This person catches the ball and then asks a question and so on. If you just want the class to answer you can be the one throwing the ball and asking the question, for example, "What day of the week is it?"  You throw the ball to someone. They catch it and answer "Monday" and throw the ball back to you. you. You then ask another question to someone else. Use this to drill a specific question and answer form or for general revision.

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Optional competitive element: If someone makes a grammatical error it is the equivalent of dropping the ball so that student loses a point for his or her team. Questionnaires

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Any size Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Questionnaires Preparation: Have the students prepare questionnaires on a given topic for homework, or you do it beforehand.  This is a useful speaking activity that gets the students out of their seats and moving around. Design a questionnaire and let students interview each other for answers. For beginners questionnaires can involve questions such as place of birth, home address, number of children, pets, likes and dislikes. For more advanced students you may venture into any topics such as finding out people's views on current events in the news. For example in France, at the time of writing, there has recently been a spate of attacks by dogs on children reported in the media. A questionnaire could find out how many people own dogs, how many have been known to bite, do they know of any people who have been been bi bitt tten en,, what what were were the the in inju juri ries es li like ke,, and and what what do peop people le thin think k ab abou outt va vari riou ous s measures that could could be taken. With advanced students students let the studen students ts come up with a list of questions for the questionnaire themselves and then circulate in class for opinions. For a variation allow students to write their own questions that they would like to ask others. Letting students choose a topic and their own questions will make them more motiv mo tivate ated d than than being being given given questi questions ons by the teache teacher. r. As stu studen dents ts are writin writing g their their questions go around the class and make sure questions are accurate - if you cannot get around everyone then just do your best. You can pair a weaker student up with a strong one so that the former learns from the latter. Quiz

 

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Category: Writing Questions and Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: All group sizes Level: High Beginner to Advanced Materials: Questions which can be prepared for homework Preparation: The class prepare questions for homework  Tell the class to prepare a quiz for homework. Ask the class for a good good topic that interests them hem. It may may be pop pop gr gro oups ups fo forr teena enagers gers or gene genera rall kno knowl wled edge ge for for ad adul ults ts.. Each student comes up with five questions about that topic for homework which you can receive and mark in advance or not, as you prefer. The benefit of marking the questions first is that it may help students formulate questions correctly during the class. The student writing the question must know the answer to it and send those answers in to you with the questions. During the lesson During lesson divide divide studen students ts into into small small teams. teams. You, You, or a studen student, t, hol hold d all the questions and ask each team in turn a question from the list, awarding points for correct answer ans wers s and triple triple points points for correc correctt answer answers s given given using using correc correctt gramma grammar. r. A star star student can be given the job of deciding if questions are accurate and thus awarding single or triple points. Being given a responsible role should keep a brighter or more advanced student challenged where otherwise he or she may become bored. Quiz Race

Category: Reading and Writing Group size: All group sizes Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Reading passage with pre-prepared questions

 

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Preparation: Choose your reading passage and write the questions or use this idea with passages in your textbook if you have one. Explain Explai n the purpose purpose of the activity activity,, which which is to imp improv rove e genera generall langua language ge ski skills lls and vocabulary through reading and to see how quickly students can scan written material for information. Give the students a text to read and make sure the topic is of interest to them. It could be something from a magazine, the paper, song lyrics, a poem, an extract from a play, or a passage pass age from the textbook textbook you are using, using, if you have one. one. Start writing writing up questions questions about the passage on the board. As soon as you start writing students race to answer these questions by scanning the written material. Your first questions may not concern the first paragr paragraph aph but come come from from inform informati ation on given given in the middle middle of the passa passage. ge. Students can write their answers answers in note form or as as full sentences as y you ou wish. When you have finished writing out the last sentence allow another thirty seconds and stop the activi act ivity. ty. Studen Students ts see how many many questi questions ons they they have have answer answered. ed. Rep Repeat eat this with with a different passage. Students are sure to be quicker the second time around. Additional option: Once students have completed this activity you may like to ask them come up with an additional question about the passage which they ask a class member.  The trick to this traditional reading comprehension activity is to give a tight time limit to add an element of excitement, and to use topics that the students are interested in. Radio

 

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A listening resource free online. BBC radio is available available free online. Use programmes programmes published published there for listening listening tasks. Let students listen to a programme for homework online and prepare questions for their fellow fello w classmates classmates.. In the next lesson students students team up and quiz other tea teams ms using the questions they all all prepared for homework. homework. The winners are both the team with the most correct answers and the team with the most unanswered questions. Another way to use radio is to have students listen to a variety of programmes and prepare a summary summary of one of them. In the next lesson s students tudents present the programme programme they heard and try to make it sound as fascinating as po possible. ssible. Having heard a handful of presentations the class vote as to which one they would like to hear most, you then let the whole class here it.  This is another good multilevel activity as the stronger students can prepare the presentations while the others listen. Reader's Theatre

 

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Objective  The main objective is to increase fluency and expression in reading aloud. Along with that, materials can be chosen to focus on certain content area objectives, vocabulary, or grammar points. Materials A fiction story full of dialogue or a text prepared in advance with the story and a play. Be sure that the story has an appropriate number of parts for each group.  Two colours of highlighters highlighters or some other way to mark mark the text. •

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Activity time: 45 – 90 minutes, depending on how much of the text preparation you do in class. How to play  This is a cooperative cooperative activity for the entire class. class.

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 Text preparation: Pre-teach any important vocabulary. Hand out the fiction text to students. Read the text aloud to students and have them highlight any dialog. This is an excellent time to review quotation marks. Have Hav e the studen students ts exchan exchange ge papers papers and com compar pare e them them in pai pairs. rs. They They should should check to see if they and their partners have highlighted correctly. Read the story together as a class and mark the key sentence in the narrative with the second highlighter colour. Make these lines the narrator's part. Discuss why a • •

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narrator important.  You haveistwo choices at this point. You can have students take parts and read the highlighted text as if it were a script, or you can collect the papers, prepare a typed script from the highlighted version and perform the play in the next class.

Play performance: Hand out scripts and assign the roles in the play. Read the text chorally if you feel students need some extra practice. Perform the play as a class. If possible tape the performance to listen to later. If there is room and opportunity, you can have students get up and perform the play with some basic staging. • •

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Reading Comprehension

 

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Rather than give students a text with questions let them write the questions themselves for their classmates. classmates. This involves students students more actively in the task rath rather er than simply scanning for usually rather obvious answers. A way to spice up this activity activity is to give a time limit for th the e task. For example students prepare ten questions for homework and bring these into class. Half the class class have prepared questions for reading reading passage A and the other half ha have ve done passage B. In class students swap reading passages and have a time limit to answer the set of questions given them by their partner. In a mixed ability class put strong pupils together and if they finish early they can go around the class checking the grammar of questions written by others, or helping other students with their answers. A variation that is fun is to let students read their passage once, then try to answer as many questions as possible from the list but without referring to the passage to do so.  These answers are worth worth five points each. The student then gets a sec second ond reading and a second chance at any any questions he/she could not not answer the first time around. These answers earn earn three points points each. Then add up the score and swap over. over. This could be done as pair work, or in teams with a panel of students working together and the most advanced student chairing the quiz. Reading Treasure Hunt

 

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Category: Step 3 Reading, Scanning for Grammar and Vocabulary Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: A reading passage Preparation: Decide what your students will look for in the passage Students are given a reading passage and use colour pencils to highlight certain words or grammatical structures that you specify. For example you might ask students to read the passage and underline any irregular verb forms in orange and any prepositions in blue. Or students can hunt through looking for any question or statement in a given tense and so on. You might ask students to hunt out a collection of vocabulary words for which you give clues. Alternatively to avoid spending preparation time on it yourself, ask students to work in pairs or small groups and come up with a list of ten words with clues for students

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from another group to find. You can allow dictionaries for this or allow a limited use of the dictio dic tionar nary, y, for exampl example e studen students ts may may look look up three three words words only only whe when n sol solvin ving g the their ir collea col league gues' s' clues. clues. Beginn Beginners ers can perfor perform m simple simple tas tasks ks suc such h as findin finding g cer certai tain n given given words, underlining verbs or prepositions or conjunctions and so on. Let students compare answers with each other as a variation to going through with the whole class. Relay Race

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None How to Play Put your group or class into teams of approximately 5 players per line. The one at the front has a picture of, say, a pizza. On your signal the first player in each line says to number 2 in the line: "Would you like some pizza?" Number 2 says "Yes please", takes the picture, turns to number 3 in the line and asks "Would you like some pizza?" number 3 says "Yes please", takes the pizza, turns to number 4, and so on until you reach the end of the line. The idea is to get the pizza down to the end of the line as quickly as possible. If you have a longer line of ten people for example, then you should pass down at least two different pictures, one after the other, to keep everyone involved. Once all the pictures are at the bottom of the line the person at the end of the line can run up to the front of the class with them. It is most important that the words are properly pronounced and that accuracy is not abandoned for speed. To ensure this you can name the first person in the line as a referee for that team. This referee must belong to another team so that he or she will referee properly. Swap the referees around, but make sure the student chosen is up to the task. Language ideas  You can use any language you like for this game, from simply naming the item and passing it down, to longer sentences with a particular verb tense or structure. Drill ideas for beginners are: I am Shelley, you are Jane. Jane continues with I am Jane you are Michael, etc. I am Shelley, she is Jane. Jane: I am Jane, he is Michael, etc. Shelley: I love ice-cream. ice-cream. Jane: I love love chocolate. chocolate. Shelley: I love ice-cream. ice-cream. Jane: She loves ice-cream, ice-cream, I love love chocolate. Michael: She loves chocolate, I love ice-cream, etc. Shelley: I like ice-cream. What do you like? like? Jane: I like chocolate. chocolate. What do do you like? Michael: I like cake, etc.  This can even be useful useful for advanced players if you wou would ld like to drill them in an aspect of language where they frequently make errors.  You do not have to use use a picture but can just pass a m message essage down the line, or a written word. Relay Race Advanced Variant: For Intermediate to Advanced students: Instead of handing down vocabulary cards or having set sentences repeated down the line of students give your pupils the more challenging task of coming up with their own sentences sent ences during during the race. For example example hand a picture picture card to the first student student in each team and this student student has to make up a sentence about about that picture. picture. The student student then passes the card to the next person in the team and this person has to make up a different sentence.

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Another task is to hand hand a word to the first student. This student makes up a sentence sentence or a question containing containing that word. This allows intermediate intermediate students to us use e a much wider range ran ge of language language.. If you use this as a fluenc fluency y game game then then you would would not focu focus s on correcting the language at at all during the game. You might note a few errors and go ov over er them on the board afterwards. Remember and Write

 

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Category: Spelling and Vocabulary Revision Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Pictures, objects or words Preparation: None Display at least 12 picture cards, objects or words at some place in the class where everyone can see them. Give the class a limited time to look at and memorize all the objects and then cover them over and allow a couple of minutes for the class to write down as many items as they remember. Play with a list of words on the board to help students learn and remember spelling. Re-Order It

 

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Category: Step 3 Reading Level: Beginner to Advanced Group size: Divide students into small groups Materials: Text on pieces of paper Preparation: Cut up a passage of text  Take some interesting text such as a poem, a story, an article, or lines li nes from a play, great novel or work of literature. literature. Use any written material that that is best adapted to the le level vel of your group. group. A nursery rhyme or children's children's story might be suitable suitable for beginners whil while ea Shakespeare sonnet would be suitable for very advanced students. A Shakespeare sonnet would be a challenge even for native speakers! Cut up this text so that there are 8 lines or portions and give these out to a small group of students. Each student has a minimum of one portion of text. Either prepare different texts for the different groups in your class or give each group the same. Now, using a time limit to increase the students' focus let the groups work out together the correct order of the text. Each student reads out their text and speaking only in English Engli sh they order it correctly. correctly. As an option option the text can then be read out, each student reading his or her line to the rest of the class. Rhyming Challenge

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill (can also be done as a writing game) Group size: Divide the class into small groups Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: None aside from some examples for your demonstration Divide the class into approximately six students or less per team. Write up six words per team on the board, or just write up six words for all teams to work with. Allow two or three minutes for students to huddle together in a group and come up with a word that rhymes with each of the words on the board and a specified sentence type containing that word. Time this and let students know when one minute has passed and when there are only thirty seconds left. This puts a little pressure on to add an element of fun and increa inc rease se the focus. focus. When When the time is up a studen studentt from from tea team m one reads reads out his or her rhyming word and sentence. Award a point for a correct rhyming word and three points for a correct sentence. Move swiftly round the teams with each team member taking a turn to give a sentence. Do not stop to correct sentences mid-game, tell those

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students to come and write up the sentence on the board and at the end of the game let the class correct all the inaccurate sentences. It should take a minute or two only to hear all the sentences and award the points so keep the game moving. As a variation you can allow students to write up their sentences when working in groups during durin g the limited time period. period. By playing with no writin writing g you force stud students ents to think up and memorise sentences so actually it is useful to play where any writing is banned. For best use of this as a speaking drill tell the students exactly what sentence formation you want them to create with the rhymes for the given words. Here is an example for lower intermediate students: Target structure: simple past. Words: bought, ran, ate, pen, smiled, walked. Example sentences: Bought: He taught English. Ran: She made a flan. Ate: She was called Kate. Pen: He was called Ken. Car: They walked far. Walked: They talked and talked. Here is a difficult example using the present perfect: Write up 6 words such as pen, chair, dog, dictionary, travel agent and bus. Students make up sentences using the present perfect tense that contains a rhyming word. Hat: She has become fat. Chair: I've been to the fair. fair. Dog: Dog: He has burnt burnt a log. log. Dictio Dictionar nary: y: I've I've played played pictionary . Thi This s is diffic difficult ult because of the present perfect requirement combined with the rhyme. A tip for the students is first to brainstorm together the words that rhyme and then see which ones fit well into sentences using the target structure. Rhyming Ping Pong

 

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Category: Writing and Speaking Drill for Vocabulary Group size: Any Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: None Have your players get together in teams and write down all the words they can think of that have a certain spelling, or rhyme with each other. For example you could tell them to write down all the words that rhyme with the sound "A" as in LAY .  The intermediates might come up with words such as: lay, day, say, play, clay, pay, tray, bay, Fay, gay, hay, May or may, way, pray. The advanced players might come up with words wor ds such such as: as: weigh, weigh, daily, daily, neigh, neigh, neighb neighbour ourly, ly, fra fray, y, pla playfu yful, l, del delay, ay, jay jay,, nay nay,, fla flay. y. Give the teams a limited time to write down their words for a few minutes before holding a play-off play-off where each team takes it in turns to call out one of their words. If a word has al alre read ady y been been said said it cann cannot ot be used used ag agai ain, n, and and it must must be cros crosse sed d off off th the e list list.. When a team has no more words it is out and the remaining teams keep batting words backwards and forwards between themselves, until only one team is left. The play-off must be fast paced with a 4 second time frame for a team to return a word or the team misses a go. You can adapt the number of seconds, but keep an eye on the pace of the game - the sense of urgency is what makes it fun. Rivet

 

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Category: Vocabulary review, recognition and word shape Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: Class board and pens Preparation: Select the vocabulary words you will play with wi th  The important thing to remember about Rivet is that it isn't Hangman. Where Hangman focuses on spelling and alphabet skills, Rivet focuses on memorized vocabulary and word

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recognition. Hangman is one word or phrase at a time while Rivet is best played with a list of related words taken from a reading or vocabulary list. Rivet involves structured teacher to student interaction with limited vocabulary – both high and low level students can play the same game with the proper preparation. The actual prep for the game is minimal, but it must be preceded by a lesson that includes the vocabulary that will be used, or you have to pick words that you know the students have have be been en ex expo pose sed d to in prev previo ious us cl clas asse ses/ s/gr grad ades es.. This This game game does does not not work work with with completely unfamiliar vocabulary. Choose three to five words that come under a related topic. They can be from a reading passage, or a lesson's vocabulary. Write the topic on the top of the board. Draw spaces on the board for each word, indicating the number of letters for each word. How to play: Point out the topic to the students, and discuss it briefly if necessary. Tell the students that the blanks on the board represent words related to the topic and they are to guess them. Students will have three chances to guess the word before you give them a letter to help them. The object of the game is to guess the words as quickly as possible. The students do not spell the words. If they guess a letter, then they are probably confusing the game with Hangman. Remind the students that you will not take any letter guesses, only words. Variation 1: The original version is a cooperative game, but this can also be played in teams. Give each word five points. For every wrong guess, take off one point. The team that guesses the word gets awarded however many points are attached to it at that moment. The team that has the most points at the end is the winner. Variation 2: Instead of blanks, draw a silhouette of the word, showing tall letters and those that hang below the line. This helps with recognizing words as a whole unit. Again, after three guesses reveal a letter. Role-Plays

 

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Role-pla Roleplays ys are excell excellent ent speaki speaking ng opport opportuni unitie ties. s. For beg beginn inners ers they they can be hig highly hly structured where students repeat a given dialogue such as going to the shop to buy some groceries. For intermediates and up students have more language to make up dialogues as they go along. Role-plays are best done in pairs or small groups of up to 6 people. Too many students per group will limit speaking opportunities and you are more likely to have one or two students take over the group and dominate. Role-plays help students relax and express themselves freely as they are not responsible for what they say - it is just the character speaking, and they are just the actor, delivering the lines, lines, not necessarily necessarily saying what they think think themselves. themselves. Role-play Role-plays s CAN be very good for shy students, helping them come out of the woodwork as they hide behind the role. Choose role play topics that your students relate to such as a job interview, parents and te teena enager gers, s, sha sharin ring g a house house with with friend friends, s, a neighb neighbour our with with terrib terrible le habits habits,, being being a dissatisfied customer and so on. Take care to avoid any sensitive topic that may upset your students. The best way tto o get good ideas for role-plays that that interest YOUR students is to ask them! Offer guidance for the role-play as required. With beginners this will mean demonstrating the role-play out front with a student, showing the dialogue written up or having students read it out or hear it several times on audio, before you can expect them to perform it from memory. With intermediates and advanced students give out roles to the students with guidelines guidelines as to what they should say or who they are in a given circumsta circumstance. nce. For example you could recreate a business meeting where one student is the boss and wants to fire someone, another is the person who is never prepared and other workers feel he or she is lazy, another cannot pay attention at the meeting and always interrupts, while another is thinking of quitting the company. Students receive a card with their character and proceed to play play out the scene spontaneously. spontaneously. For intermediates it's it's best if students

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get their personality specs and the main theme of the role-play in a previous class and prepare prepa re some lines or thoughts thoughts for homewor homework. k. This will make the actual actual live role-play role-play more fluid. An interesting thing to do once the role-play has played itself out the first time is to swap the roles roles around by letting letting stude students nts draw them randomly randomly,, and do it again. The second second time around it will not necessarily be the same given that students have new roles, plus an increased familiarity with the situation and language – it may well be better the second time around. Once the students have the idea on how to play this game you can ask them for ideas on whatt role-p wha role-play lays s to do. Your Your studen students ts will will certa certainl inly y come come up with with many many int intere eresti sting ng situations from their own lives and you can ask them to make up character cards for these which you can use in a subsequent class when students act out the situations. This can be followed with a discussion of the best outcome. Use this idea for a wide range of topics and it is especially useful if you are teaching English to adults for a particular profession such as nursing or engineering. The role-plays can centre on work situations that your students are likely to find themselves in. Business English students students often want to role-play meetings meetings such such as sales or staff meetings. For general English try topics like: Choo Ch oosi sing ng th the e fa fami mily ly holi holida day, y, wi with th ea each ch fa fami mily ly memb member er havi having ng diff differ eren entt preferences. The family have to reach reach a consensus or there is no holiday!  The wife w ife wants to move to a different place for work, or to the country while the husband wants to stay in the city. Debating what the group/family budget will be spent on: private school fees, or an extension to the house, or investment in a business, or paying off the mortgage early. Government ministers arguing over their share of the pie: housing, agriculture, health, national security, police… A school gets a big grant, what do they spend it on? The students take on on roles of the different subject teachers – new science lab, new gym, field trips, sponsoring bright students for for further education. The head mistress mistress chairs the meeting. meeting. Find a real situation going on in the press and ask students to prepare roles for it for homework. The newspaper article will usually set forth forth elements of the deb debate ate to help students furnish their role-play. •

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Shopping Role-Play Idea Make some students store keepers and give them each a list of the items they stock. Make the bulk of the students shoppers and give them a list of items each to buy – these lists list s can differ. differ. Let the student students s have a time limit to go out and and buy all the items the they y need. may onetooncomplete the lists the that thattask doesand notthose exist in the shops so then any student that listThere will not bebe able students could becomewith the shop keepers in a second round. Easy Prep Role-Play A variation on preparing for role-plays is to do something less structured, perhaps with fewer roles. Write up a difficult difficult situation on the board such as two peo people ple arguing about why they missed a train and blaming each other, and where they were beforehand. Now split the class, half half for one character and half for the other. Let them write down as many things that they they can think of th that at their character would say. Now have a couple couple of students stand up up – probably the best students – and do do a demo of the argument. Once everyone has seen the dialogue in action let them pair up and try their own creative argument. Blow a whistle every minute (or more if you can see that most people are are still arguing) and all students swap partners. Round Robin

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: 1 or more with the class divided into small groups of up to 8 students or so per group Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: A soft ball or some paper crunched into a ball and pencil and paper for the students Preparation: None  This is a great game for practising practising all kinds of small talk so it is good for speaking fluen fluency. cy.  The example given here is for advice but it isn't limited to that. There's also no out of class clas s preparation preparation so you can play it any time. You may need ten or fifteen fifteen minutes of preparation in class depending on your students and the lesson you plan to use it in. Each student needs to write down or memorize a mild complaint or problem, such as "I'm cold" or "I have a headache." With low-level students you can discuss these beforehand and have students write down possible advice for such problems on another sheet of paper. For example, if a student is assigned the problem, "I'm cold," then you can discuss responses like, "I'll turn up the heat" or "I'll close the window." You may want to practice the short short conver conversa satio tions ns choral chorally. ly. Advanc Advanced ed stu studen dents ts should should be able able to wor work k withou withoutt writing down the phrases. How to play  The teacher starts off by tossing the ball to a student who states their problem: "I'm cold." The student throws the ball to someone else in class. The person who catches the ball responds to the complaint with simple advice like, "Would you like a jacket?" or "I'll close the window." The first student should respond appropriately with "Thank you," or "Yes, please." Etc. Now the student who has the ball states a complaint, throws the ball to someone else, and starts everything over. This is a cooperative game, so there aren't any winners or losers. You could set a goal to see how quickly everyone in the class could complete one turn. This would encourage fluency. With Wit h groups groups you need need one ball per group group and the groups groups sit togeth together er and practise practise simultaneously to avoid having students sitting around only listening. Listening is good and you can do this as part of the demo, but the main thing is to get students students to have a chance to speak. Variation 1 All about you: instead of discussing complaints, discuss personal history. This resembles a common type of small talk. Variation 2 Hobbies and activities: students make comments about what they do in their free time. "I like to read." "I play racket ball on Wednesdays." Again, this is based on a common type of small talk.

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Games S Sentence Play Off

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency or Writing Level: Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: Prepare a few examples for a demonstration if you cannot think of them off the cuff. See how many sentences your students can come up with that all contain a given word. For example example give a word such as paint. paint. It is good to choose a word that has more than one function such as a word that can be a verb or a noun to have more possibilities for sentences. Allow 2 minutes for all the students to write down as many sentences as possible containing the word paint. Students can work in small groups. Then have a play of offf be betw twee een n team teams s Pin Ping g Pong  Pong   st styl yle e and and see see whic which h team team ha has s the the most most se sent nten ence ces. s. Examples with paint are: I can paint. Can you paint? I love painting. He paints every week. I need some paint. Please buy me some paint. With advanced students you can bypass the writing stage and play directly as a speaking game. If using this as a writing idea let all students choose a word, write a sentence with it and pass the paper on to the next person. Let the papers circulate around several students and each time the students add a sentence of their own to the paper using the specified word for that piece of paper until you have about five sentences on each. At the end let stud studen ents ts mark mark the the pape paperr they they ar are e ho hold ldin ing, g, co corre rrect ctin ing g any any er erro rors rs they they sp spot ot in the the sentences. Now students get together in small groups in order to attempt to eradicate all errors from the papers. The teacher circulates and tells students when they have finished, or if there is still an error to correct on the paper. When one group has finished the group members can split up to join other groups and help them finish. Show Me

 

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Category: Step 1 Listening Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner Materials: Pictures Preparation: Put pictures or words up around the room  This is a simple game where the players show their understanding of vocabulary and it is a good game for introducing new vocabulary or revising it before a speaking game. Very simply you ask the players to all show you an item. For example show me a pen, (everyone holds up a pen), show me a blue pen (they hold up a blue pen), show me the floor, the ceiling, the wall, the left wall, the right wall, a rubber, a ruler, a friend, a girl, a boy, a hand, a leg, a friend's foot, a blue skirt, a sock, a door, a pen in a pencil case, a pen under a pencil case and so on. You can also have students point to the item on the wall if you can put pictures up around the class. Introduce new grammar structures in combination with word flashcards to revise known vocabulary by using a sentence such as "I went to the beach" so students point at the beach. "I saw a film" so students point at the cinema and so on. Shopping List Memory Game

Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Divide the class into small groups of 6 Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Optional use of pictures Preparation: None

 

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How to Play Place the picture cards of the vocabulary in a pile. Player one takes a card and lays it down naming the picture or making a sentence about it as required. Player 2 picks out another card and lays it down next to player 1's picture. Player 2 repeats the required sentence, adding their chosen item to the list, and so it goes on, with the list getting longer and longer, for example: Player 1: In my trolley I have got some milk, Player 2: In my trolley I have got some milk and some chocolate Player 3: In my trolley I have got some milk, some chocolate and some oranges If it is too easy using pictures then rely on memory alone. Language Ideas  This game is adaptable adaptable to a multitude of language uses uses,, for example:  There is/there are: In my wardrobe there are socks, there are shoes, there is a dress dress,, there are shirts, there is a scarf etc. Her name is/His name is She's a/he's a She likes/she does not like Playing sports: He plays golf, he plays tennis, he goes riding, he windsurfs, etc. Past tense: Yesterday for supper I had milk, chocolate, pizza, etc. Simon Says

 

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Category: Step 1 Listening Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None Simon Says   can can be adapted, becoming increasingly sophisticated as the players have a greater command of the language. The classic version of Simon Says  is   is as follows: The teacher starts off as Simon and gives the players instructions which they must follow, but only if Simon says so. For example: Simon says touch touch your nose. (Simon tou touches ches his nose) All players must touch touch their nose. Simon says touch your feet. (Simon touches his feet) All players must touch their feet.  Touch your head. (Simon touches his head) Players must not touch their head because Simon didn't say so.

Normally in the classic version any players who touched their head would be out. So as soon as you have a few people out you restart the game with everyone playing again. Language Ideas Obviously Simon Says  is  is a great game to play for body parts, and once your players have got the hang of the vocabulary vocabulary they can be Simon. However However the language potentia potentiall for Simon Says  does  does not stop there. Here are some other examples of things that Simon can say: Raise your left hand/Touch your right leg  Touch something blue  Touch different articles articles of clothing  Touch a body part of the the person next to them  Jump/run on the spot/stop/dance/sing/be spot/stop/dance/sing/be silent/sit down/stand down/stand up/listen/look a att the ceiling/look up/look down/look to the left/look at the floor/touch a chair/write/ Mime an action such as drink a glass of water/eat an ice cream/sleep/ get dressed/ get undressed/pretend to be a hairdresser, a doctor • • •

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Point to to a vocabulary picture - you can putspecific pictures on the floorSimon or walls forpoint the at players become familiar familiar with or revise vo vocabulary. cabulary. says the train! Point at the bus! Etc.

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Harder Versions for Intermediates For players with a good command of the language, and once they have got Simon Says down pat, you can complicate the game to keep them on their toes. In this version Simon says two things at once, for example: Simon says raise your hand and Simon says touch your leg. The players must raise their hand and touch their leg. Simon says eat ice-cream and touch your nose. The so. players must eat ice cream but not touch their nose because Simon did not say

And here is a third, even more complicated version - you may have to rehearse being Simon for this one! When Simon says to do something something the players have to ke keep ep doing it until Simon specifically asks them to stop. In the meantime Simon continues to make other requests. For example: Simon says touch your head. Simon says touch your shoulder and Simon says stick your tongue out. Simon says spin around and shout JUMP! At this point the players should be spinning round with one hand on their head and the other on their shoulder, sticking their tongue out, but they should not shout JUMP! as Simon did not say to do so.

Simon then continues with: Simon says stop touching your head and rub your stomach instead. Players must stop touching their heads but should not rub their stomachs, as Simon did not say so.

Well I'm sure you get the picture. This game can really be a lot of fun and the trick is for you as Simon to keep the pace up and link the commands rapidly so your players' attention is absolutely riveted on listening to your every word!  There is nothing to prevent you you playing until you have a winner - the bett better er you get at being Simon the sooner you can trick everyone into making a mistake and you can have a winner fairly quickly, before those who are out have time to get bored. So that it is easy for you to see who is still in the game you can have those who are out sit down. Simon says speaking variant Allow your players to be Simon. You can have several Simons at once, as while one Simon is giving a command the other can be thinking of the next one - this ensures the pace is fast and furious, which it needs to be to make this game really fun. Speed Drill

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the sentences you will use for this drill Write up a sentence using a new grammatical structure that you are teaching and bring two student students s up to the front front of the class class to demons demonstra trate te fir first. st. Tell Tell the studen students ts to memorize the sentence and cover it up or rub it out. Give each student a couple of trial runs. Next, on the word "go" the two students say the sentence out loud from memory and try to finish first with no mistakes. This helps students speak faster as well as drilling in grammar. Repeat the demonstration with two different students if you feel it necessary and then let the class divide up into groups of three, two players and one referee. Provide

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several sentences for the class to work with, each one using the same new grammar, or if you are using this for revision then use different sentence forms. After each round the refere ref eree e becom becomes es a speake speakerr so studen students ts are not always always compet competing ing agains againstt the sa same me person. After 5 minutes the referee from each group moves to another grou group, p, again so that students can vary whom they compete against. Referees can award 2 points to the winner and one point to the loser if he or she completes the sentence with no mistakes. This gives a reason for the slower person to finish their sentence. Students keep a mental note of their points as they circulate around the class. At the end the two students with the most points can play against each other once for fun in front of the class. Spell and Speak

 

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Category: Spelling Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide which words you wish to focus on Put players into teams and spell out a word such as "l-i-g-h-t" or "b-o-u-g-h". As soon as a student has identified the word he or she knocks on his or her desk, and gives you the answer, gaining points if correct. With more advanced advanced players this is quite a good game game to highlight certain words such as "bow" which can be pronounced in two different ways, with different meanings, and which can be a noun and a verb.  You can also use this game to draw attention to words which have silent letters, (as in "light" and "bough") or pairs of sounds with different spellings, (such as "whine" and "wine" "wi ne",, "heel" "heel" and "heal" "heal",, "wheth "whether" er" and "weath "weather" er",, "den" "den" and "when" "when",, "gr "graph aph"" and "staff") or words which are frequently misspelled, (such as "recommend", "apartment", "principle" and "principal" or "exercise").  You can give your class a homework assignment to go away and each person prepares a list of 3 words that they feel feel to be difficult difficult to spell. Put your class class into teams and have them play Spell and speak  with  with their own selection of words. Spelling Challenge

 

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Category: Spelling Group size: Two students to a small class Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Think up words for the students to test each other with. As an alternative to Spell and Speak, let students look up words to use in class for homework. Divide students into small small teams. Each team team member takes a turn at saying a word for the other team to spell. Award a point to the teams for correct spelling. With a class, team members write up words on the board simultaneously so that you can check they are correct. With small groups students can spell words out loud, which is harder. Advanced students will get more out of the game if you tell them to prepare a list of words for homework. Give them some examples of good words to use such as words with silent letters or strange spelling. With business students include useful and frequently misspe mis spelle lled d words words such such as recomm recommend end,, necess necessary ary,, am amend endmen ment, t, ful fulfil fil,, ref referr erral al and unnecessary. Spontaneous Sentence

Category: Step 5 Speaking Level: Upper Intermediate to Advanced Group size: Any

 

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Materials: None Preparation: None One student starts a sentence with a word. The next student adds a word and so on until a sentence is constructed. Make up stories this way or stick to sentences. Have one student writing up the sentence as it is formed on the board for all to see. Specify whether contributions are to be random or to go round in order. This works for small groups gro ups only, only, otherw otherwise ise fo form rm tea teams ms and have have two or three three sen senten tences ces bei being ng cre create ated d simultaneously. Stop!

 

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Category: Step 3 Writing Drill Vocabulary Game Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None Each player draws a chart with 5 or 6 columns, each with a heading, such as numbers, names, countries, animals, clothes, professions, TV shows, food, fruits, things they would like to have, etc. Use headings the players have plenty of vocabulary in. One of the players starts the game by calling out the letters of the alphabet. The player next to him or her randomly calls out "stop!" The one saying the letters of the alphabet has to stop on whatever letter has just been said. Everyone now writes down an item in each category starting with that letter, until one of the players finishes, when he or she says "stop!" in which case everyone has to stop writing, whether finished or not.  You can also as a back up give a time limit so you do not have the game dragging on. If no one has said stop after one minute, perhaps because every one is having difficulty thinking up words beginning with the chosen letter, just say stop yourself. Repeat with some someon one e el else se sayi saying ng th the e al alph phab abet et and and th the e pers person on next next to th them em sa sayi ying ng st stop op.. Continue for a few rounds and then quickly review the answers, awarding a point for each word written. If someone has a word that no one else has you could award double points for being original. Have all the players call out their answers so all the students hear the vocabulary repeatedly. Students can tick off their words when they are called out. You can either trust the players to do their own scores or have them swap papers with someone else. Here is an example of a player's chart: Animals

Panda Snake

Countries Countries or con tinent contin ents s Poland South America

Stories Dominoes

Prof Pr ofes essi sions ons

Co Colo lour urs s

Food Fo od

Priest Singer

Purple Scarlet

Pea Sauce

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Small groups of 3 to 6 players per group Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: Dominoes you or the students make which is easy to do Preparation: Providing words for the dominoes Materials Write out a selection of words on small pieces of card to make up a set of dominoes. You need one set per group of students. Choose vocabulary relevant to a theme you are studying or would like to revise. Here are example domino words for a fantasy story: castle, witch, princess, wand, fairy, prince, magic carpet, dark forest, cave, deep well, monster, lion, queen, king, army, ring, broomstick, mountain, lake, giant, elf, girl, boy, road, gold.

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For business students or adults who seem serious use words such as: meeting, executive, sales manager, sales target, clip board, overhead projector, PowerPoint presentation, and so on. This way students will be practising using vocabulary they feel to be relevant to their needs. With teenagers a story focused around going on a date or the life of a pop musician might appeal. If in doubt ask your class what they want to make up a story about and let them come up with the core words for the dominoes. You can use the same set of dominoes for each group because it will be fun to see how different the stories turn out. How to play  The group shuffle and deal out the domino word cards. The first player selects a card from his or her pile and places it on the table and makes up the first line of a story using the word on the domino. The next student in the circle adds any one of his or her domino cards and continues the story. Continue until all players have used up their dominoes.  The group can then tell their version of the story to another group and vice versa. As an indication, for a group of six give out 24 dominoes so each student has four turns. That is long enough or the task of telling the story to other groups afterwards will be difficult. Story Memory Game

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Groups of 6 Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: A story chopped up into sentences Preparation: Choose a story Divide students into groups groups of six. Give each student a line of the story. The first player player reads out the first line of the story. The second player must memorise it, repeat it and add his or her line. The third player repeats the first two lines and adds his or line and so on. Keep the sentences short so that they are easy to remember. Use a tense that you would like to reinforce in your current teaching. For beginners use children's stories or make up something suitably easy such as describing daily routine where bizarre things happen or events. Story Telling

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Any Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: Several stories Preparation: Find some stories in the local library, online, or write them As always explain the purpose of the activity, which in this case is to story telling for fluency. You may also be revising a particular tense, usually the past tense, but one can tell stories in the future too. Divide the class into pairs and distribute a selection of stories about the class. Four stories or so per class should be sufficient. Use stories from the news, from passages in textbooks, from history books, which are always a great source of stories, from novels, movies, cartoons, biographies and so on. You can set homework before this task where students each write up a story such a summary of a favourite novel or film and use corrected versions in class. Let students work in pairs practising telling the story you have given them to each other. At this stage the students working in pairs have the same story as their pair as the idea is that they become proficient at telling it. Once you feel that most students are confident in telling their story you collect in the stories, mix up the pairs and let students tell their stories to each other. The listener has to give a summary of the story after hearing it or answer a question about it that the storyteller can ask so that he or she has a reason to listen to the tale. Swap the students around and repeat. Swap again and this time allow a time limit of 1 or 2 minutes only so that students have to tell their stories really fast.

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Another idea for story telling Another telling is to have storyteller storytellers s and listeners. listeners. Working Working with a small small group grou p of listeners listeners each storytell storyteller er tells only a PART of his/her story. story. The liste listeners ners then have a time limit to interview their storytellers to glean as much information about what happened as possible. possible. At this point the the listeners get together in groups and try to piece piece together the whole story, which they then tell to their storyteller, who says if they are correct or not.  This could work well with a multilevel multilevel class. Ideas to help prompt the creation of stories could be: movies, your life, your wildest dream, your work, a picture, an article or newspaper headline, the journey of an object in your pencil pencil case…who case…who knows how how many hands a pen could pass pass through! through! Any small small starting star ting point that can trigger trigger your students' students' imaginations imaginations is all it takes. For students students who don't seem able to make things up, let them recount a book they read, or a film they saw. Subject Verb Object

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: Groups of up to 5 students Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: Sets of subject, verb and object cards Preparation: None if you use one of the sets provided in Appendix II, or have students make the cards in groups in class. Materials  This is a variant of Find the Pairs Memory game. Print out the the set of Subject Verb Verb Object cards cards provided provided in Appendix II. Use card rather rather than paper so that it is not see-through when placed face down otherwise the game is too easy.. You will find one set easy set already already filled in with vocabulary vocabulary and another another that is blank, blank, ready for filling in by students in class, or by you, using the specific vocabulary you would like used in the game. One third of the cards has an S in the corner and shows a noun or pronoun. If using pictures of people use different sexes of individuals or groups so students can practise he, she and they. The next third shows a verb and has a V in the corner and the final third has an O in the corner and shows an object. You may use any vocabulary that you may be learning or wishing to review for these objects. It is better to use pictures rather than words if you want to review vocabulary but if you want to work on tenses then using words is fine. When writing out the verbs use the infinitive so that the students have to think of the correct corre ct tense themselve themselves s rather than just reading reading off the card. This also allo allows ws you to use the same sets sets of card for all the tenses tenses.. However However for beginners beginners you might want to make it easier at first and use verb cards with the verbs written out in the tense you are drilling. drill ing. For example example your verb cards cards might be “make, ma makes, kes, read, reads, reads, eat, eats”, eats”, and so on. Students Students will in this case case have to match match the pronoun “he” with with “eats” and “they” “they ” with “eat”. “eat”. This helps helps them them focus focus on adding adding the “s” “s” for he/she/ he/she/it. it. If students students make their own cards in class this will help them do better in the game and is a good exercise for beginners. Each small group of students needs a set of fifteen cards with five subjects, five verbs and five objects. Shuffle the cards and lay lay them out out face down. Players tak take e it in turns turns to turn over three cards, the aim being to reveal a subject, verb and object. When this happens the student makes up a sentence using the three words and if correct keeps the three cards. Define in advance whether this sentence should make sense (harder) or not (easier). (eas ier). Continue Continue until no cards are left left on the table. The winner winner or winning team has the most cards. This game lends itself to any tense and any vocabulary.

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Talk About It

Games T

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: 2 to 30 students Level: Lower Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the topics to discuss Set up chairs in rows facing each other so with ten students you would have five on each side. You sit at the end of the row as timekeeper. The people on your right are talkers and have to talk about a topic for 1 minute without stopping. The people on the left are listeners and do not talk at all except to encourage the talkers and provide a word if they get stuck. You can allow any kind of topic, serious or funny. You can hand out topics for students to talk about, have all students talking about a different topic, all about the same one, or let students choose their own topics. If you let students talk about topics of their choice they may have more to say on them, however forcing a student to talk about a topic you select can stretch their imagination and vocabulary. In general I would say that it is best to give students a choice of topics at the very least rather than force someone to talk about goldfish when they know nothing about them other than that they are orange. All the talkers talk at the same time so you have to accept a certain amount of noise and you cannot expect to control and correct everything that is said. This is a fluency exercise so errors are to be expected. When the minute is up, the right row moves one seat down and the last person comes to the front near you so they are talking to different people.  The left side never moves. The people on the right talk on the same topic repeatedly so they have a chance to become more and more fluent at expressing themselves. Then you can ask the listeners what things they would like to review, what struck them about the topics that was funny or helpful or that they disagreed with and so on. This gives the listeners a chance to contribute and gives value to their listening activity. In the next class swap listeners and talkers over. Keep the time carefully because this makes things move along and more fun. With advanced students you can vary the game by giving a 2-minute talking period to allow students to go into their topic in more depth. Ten Important Sentences with Watermelon

 

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Category: Reading Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any class size Materials: A written passage chopped into pieces Preparation: Find and chop up a written passage into sentences or partial sentences  This helps with summarizing, with scanning for meaning, working under pressure, team building and with vocabulary. It also suits students with a tactile learning style. Divide the class into small teams of three to four students per team maximum. If you are only teaching a small number of students put them in pairs. Each team or pair sends a representative up to the board where you have randomly stuck sentences from a reading passage or story. Each team has its own set of jumbled sentences. For beginners use a whole sentence per piece of paper and for more advanced levels chop sentences up too. Students at the board race to put their text in a coherent order, the catch being that a student may only work on the task while he or she can say "watermelon" constantly without taking a breath. When the student runs out of breath he sits down and the next student in the team comes come s up to continue the work. The winners winners finish ordering ordering their sentence sentence or passage passage first.

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Tests and Exams

 

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Category: Step 3 Writing Drill Group size: All class sizes Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Prepare clear instructions for the class Instead of writing your own test or exam each week have the students write them for each other. The first task is for students to each write 5 or 10 questions based on the previous week's lessons along with an answer sheet. You collect these in and correct any errors. Students rewrite their questions error-free and bring their tests into the next class. Now students pair up and each student does the other one's test. Then they mark each other other's 's work. work. This This proces process s reinfo reinforce rces s gramma grammarr tested tested much much more more eff effici icient ently ly than than passively answering set questions, as it requires the students to think for themselves much mu ch more more.. Stud Studen ents ts wi will ll al also so enjo enjoy y corr correc ecti ting ng ea each ch othe other, r, an and d it wi will ll boos boostt their confidence as everyone has a chance to be teacher as well as student.  To cover the situation if you find that some students do not hand in their work take some extra copies of one student's test and have that ready with an answer sheet to give to students who come unprepared. Things

 

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Category: Step 6 Creative Writing with Reading Group size: Students are divided into small groups of 5 to 6 players Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: A list of 'things' Preparation: Write up the 'things' Write a list of provocative 'things' such as things you should not say to your mother, things you should not wear to a wedding, things that go bump in the night, things that can get you arrested, things that you should never put in an omelette and so on. These can be listed on paper or printed off on card and cut out onto individual cards. Each small group of students has the list of things. Starting with the first 'thing you should never do' students write down their idea of what that thing is without the others seeing it. For example the thing maybe 'things you should never say to your mother'. Students write something something down such such as, 'you are are looking old'. old'. Students then han hand d their comment over to the group reader who shuffles the ideas and reads out each comment.  The other players have to match the comment with the person who wrote it, one guess only each. If a match is done successfully the person identified gets a minus point for that round and the person making the correct match gets a point credit. Ask the students to come up with a list of things for this game for homework that they send into you so you can prepare the cards in advance and correct any errors. More ideas to use with this game are:  Tell me something about about rainy days.  Tell me something about about chocolate.  Tell me about something something furry etc. How do you kill time?  Tell me about people who: who: Drop litter Park on the pavement Work away from home Who never marry Who are married but don't want children Who don't pay tax

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Eat dogs / horse meat Over-eat even though they know it is giving them health problems Who smoke even though they know it might kill them Who speed Who mug old ladies Who think that we should all be equal Who are always checking their phones for messages  To free up students from feeling concerned about giving away sensitive viewpoints let everyone hand hand in their answers answers on papers. Then the class listens to all the different responses being read out out anonymously. It's an interesting way to see see how others think without getting personal. Things We do

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: None  This is a simple game where the teacher gives a category and the students come up with sentences using all the the associated verbs they they can think of. For example the teacher says "house "ho usewor work" k" and the students students make make senten sentences ces,, either either in a specif specific ic tense tense or usi using ng a specific structure, or freely, according to whether you want this to be a grammar drill or a freer speaking activity. Time Bomb

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Divide the class into small groups Materials: A wind up timer is optional Preparation: Decide on the questions you will ask  This is a great game and you can use it for any grammar or language, from a basic repetitive drill to free questions. You do need a timer of some sort, preferably one that ticks. You can find these in toy stores. Wind up the timer and give it to a student. Ask that student stud ent a question, the student student answers and then passes passes the timer on. The student student holding the timer when it stops loses a life. For beginners ask the same type of question over and over again such as: "Do you like bananas? Do you like eggs? Do you like cooking?" cook ing?" Students Students reply: reply: "Yes I do. No I don't." Drill Drill any grammar grammar in this way. If you have a large class split it into smaller groups and give each group a timer. Alternatively if you do not have a timer let groups pass an object round. When you clap the people holding the object have to do a forfeit (see Forfeits for ideas) or lose a life. Tongue Twisters

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: All class sizes Level: Beginners to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Have some tongue twisters to hand Classic tongue twisters that you can have fun with are included below and in a separate word document so that you can edit it as you like and print off what you need. Ideas for use: •

Have fun trying to say them fast to encourage students to speak faster and more fluently.

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•

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Use them as forfeits for other games.  Try them in Relay race . Give out the tongue twisters as anagrams and let the class work out the sentences. Dictate the tongue twister in a monotone with no punctuation and let the class work out the punctuation and meaning

Here are the tongue twisters: Peter picked.Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper She sells seashells on the seashore.  The shells she sells are are seashells. I wish to wish the wish you wish to wish, but if you wish the wish the witch wishes, I won't wish the wish you wish to wish. Betty bought butter but the butter was bitter, so Betty bought better butter to make the bitter butter better. Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he? If a bl blac ack k bug bug blee bleeds ds blac black k bloo blood, d, what what colo colour ur bloo blood d do does es a blue blue bug bug blee bleed? d? It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in! I saw a saw that could out saw any saw I ever saw before. Any noise annoys an oyster but a noisy noise annoys an oyster more. More advanced tongue twisters Mr See owned a saw. And Mr Soar owned owned a seesaw. Now See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw before Soar saw See, which made Soar sore. Had Soar seen See's saw before See sawed Soar's seesaw; See's saw would not have sawed Soar's seesaw. I cannot bear to see a bear bear down upon a hare. When bare of hair he strips the hare, right there I cry, "Forbear!"  This one is good for for the French who have trouble with "th".  Theofilis Thistle, the successful thistle sift sifter, er, one day while sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb. Now if Theofilis  Thistle, the successful successful thistle sifter, one day while s sifting ifting a sieve full of unsift unsifted ed thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb, see that you while sifting a sieve full of unsifted thistles, thrust not three thousand thistles through the thick of your thumb.   A tree toad loved a she-toad who lived up in a tree. He was a two-toed tree toad but a three-toed toad was she.  The two-toed tree tree toad tried to win the three-to three-toed ed she-toad's heart, for the two-toed tree toad loved the ground that the three-toed tree toad trod. But the two-toed tree toad tried in vain. He couldn't please her whim. From her tree toad bower with her three-toed power the she-toad vetoed him.

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Triangles Talking Point

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: Divide the class into small groups Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Decide on the three points of each triangle Draw a triangle on the board and put three objects on each corner. For example: Lorry, bus and car or something related to the subject you are studying. Then ask students which is the best and why? You'll get some very interesting answers. True or False

 

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Category: Step 1 Listening Vocabulary Practice for beginners Group size: All sizes Level: Beginner Materials: Pictures or objects Preparation: Prepare the statements you will make if you cannot think of things off the cuff  For basic vocabulary practice you name an item or make a statement and the class says whether it is true or false. For example you point to a picture of an apple and say "pear", the class must say "False". You hold a pen under a chair and say "The pen is under the chair", the class must say, "True", and so on. True or False Question Practice

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: All class sizes Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Think about the questions you will use for the drill  This game is a question drill game suitable for beginners to lower intermediate. It is excellent for drilling any type of question form and tense.  You imagine something and the others guess what it is through questions. questions. For example to work on present present continuous continuous you imagine an outf outfit it you are wearing. wearing. Use picture cards of clothes to help students think of clothing items if necessary. Now the students ask in unison, "What are you wearing?" You reply, "I'm wearing a hat", or "I'm wearing a red hat". Each class member decides whether he or she thinks this is true or false. Everyone stands. Whoever thinks it is true puts their hand up. Whoever Whoever thinks it is false keeps both hands down. Those who get it wrong are out and have to sit down. Continue until the class have discovered the full outfit and see which students are still in the game. Those who are out still ask the question in unison with the class but they cannot play. Play with any language. Play as above but change the vocabulary or language to suit your needs. Here is a past tense example: What did you eat last night? I ate spaghetti. Here is a future example: Where are you going for your holiday? I'm going to Spain.  To personalise this activity have students prepare a scenario for homework and then in the next lesson play again. Students come up to the front in turn and you play the games as described above using their scenarios. Typhoon

Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: 3 to 18 players, up to 30 players at a stretch Level: Beginner to Intermediate

 

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Materials: None Preparation: Think about the questions you will use for the drill Divide your class into three or more teams and draw a grid on the board and an identical grid on a piece of paper. Label the grids with numbers and letters or with vocabulary words. Numbers and letters are good for beginners learning the alphabet otherwise use vocabulary words for revision. On the paper version fill in a random score in each grid.  The scores can vary from zero to several million. Stick to simple numbers for beginners and use more variety with the intermediate students. In a few of the grids write a T. BOARD VERSION

Chicken

Sheep

Goat

Donkey

Chicken

Sheep

Goat

Donkey

Horse

10

T

300

5

Cow

100

500

T

400

Pig

 T

200

50

300

Horse Cow Pig PAPER VERSION

 The students must answer a question for their team and if correct they choose a grid, such as "Chicken Horse" if you are using vocabulary words. You then read out the score for that grid, which in this case is 10 points and that team win 10 points for having answered the question correctly. You or a student can be up at the board writing up the team scores. If a student picks a grid that comes up as a T the team have the right to wipe out another team's score.  You need at least three teams teams or players to make the T choice o off the victim interesting. If you only have two players then when a student picks a grid with the letter T, that student can lose lose all his or her points points instead. instead. In this case case say that players players can stop stop once they reach a certain score. score. For example if players reach a score of 1000 1000 they have won. Once you have played this a couple of times and the students have the hang of it you can add variety by using S for steal another team's score and D for double your own score in some of the grids along with normal scores and the T.

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Games U-Z Vocabulary Baseball

 

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Materials Vocabulary lists- taught to the students in advance. Prizes (optional) Preparation  This takes minimal preparation time but the vocabulary must have been taught in previous lessons. Make up a vocabula vocabulary ry list, or cards, for the "pitcher." Easy Easy words are marked "single," difficult words are "double," and harder words are "triples." If you have bonus challenge words they can be "home runs." How to play  This can be played as a drill or for fluency. If playing as a drill use the same structure over and over and if playing for fluency allow any kinds of sentences. 1. Divide the class into two teams. You'll want to push desks to the sides. 2. Tell the students where first, second, third, and home plates are. The students take turns "at bat," and the other team takes turns "pitching" or reading the words. 3. The batter requests a single, double or triple (or home run if you have decided to allow them.) 4. The pitcher, with the help of the team, if you like, picks a word and calls it out to the batter. 5. The batter gives a definition and uses it in a sentence. 6. If the umpire (usually the teacher) decides it is correct the batter advances a base. Any other players on base also advance. 7. When a batter reaches "home base" the team gets a point. 8. If the definition or usage in the sentence is incorrect, then the batter is out. 9. Three outs mean the teams change places. 10. You may choose how many innings to play. Three innings is a good number, but it will depend on how large your teams are.  The team with the most most points wins a predetermined prize. Vocabulary Picture Hunt

 

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Category: Spelling Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Group size: Any class size Materials: Pictures from magazines Preparation: None once you have found the pictures Find pictures containing vocabulary you want to teach or revise. These are not picture flashcards but pictures of scenes that contain the vocabulary words as part of the scene. For example one of your words might be coffee machine, and this could be found in the picture pictu re of an office office interior. interior. Write up these vocabula vocabulary ry words on the board board while the students copy them down. Number your pictures and spread them about the class. Give a couple of minutes for students to go around and look for the objects on the board and find them in the pictures. When a student has found an object in a picture he or she can write up the picture number next to the word on his paper. The first five students to finish are the winners.    Think of the types of magazines you can buy such as home decor magazines for househ hou sehold old object objects s or furnit furniture ure,, fashio fashion n magaz magazine ines, s, Hello Hello magaz magazine ine or equiva equivalen lentt for sc scene enes s of people people's 's houses houses,, sporti sporting ng public publicati ations ons,, busine business ss magaz magazines ines for techni technical cal vocabu voc abular lary y on comput computing ing and te telec lecomm ommuni unicat cation ions, s, or specia specialis listt subjec subjectt mag magaz azine ines s

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relevant to your group such as health relevant health or engineering. engineering. There are also also free catalogue catalogues s from large large chain stores stores that are filled filled with a wealth of pictur pictures. es. Free brochures brochures and leaflets also contain pictures. Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt Listening

 

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Category: Listening Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any class size Materials: Passages Passages of text either pre-recorded or to be read out Preparation: Choosing a selection of listening passages with related questions or gap-fills Use this as a general listening comprehension or for specific grammar as a listening gapfill exercise. Place several listening devices such as portable CD players with speakers at different places plac es in the room. If you do not have any equipment equipment and students students do not want to use theirs their s then have a student at each 'listening 'listening post' read out the passa passages ges instead. instead. The advantage of the recorded version is that you can use native speakers from around the world to get the students used to hearing English spoken with varied pronunciation. Students have a time limit to go around all the listening stations and find the answers to their questions, or fill in the missing words in their their gap fills. The different passages passages may be parts of a story that are broken up into sections and students must piece it together again. The listening passage passage should be played or read read from start to finish, then rewound and played again again as needed. Students cannot s stop top the pass passage age half way through through if they show up in the middle of it. That is all part part of the game. game. Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt Reading

 

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Category: Skimming Reading Passages for Vocabulary and/or Grammar Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any class size Materials: Reading passages and a list of words to find Preparation: Choosing a reading passage and listing words to find  The purpose of this activity is to scan passages for words and for vocabulary review. Find a reading passage that suits the level of your students and select a number of vocabulary words from that passage. If you are using a textbook look no further and use this activity with the reading passages you have to hand. Each student needs a copy of the reading passage and the list of words to find, which can be on the board. Set a time limit and let the students race to find all the words in the passage, circling or highlighting them as they skim through. With higher-level students you can ask them to state the function of the word in the context of the passage, i.e. is it being used as a noun, a verb or an adverb and so on. Students can be given the infinitive of verbs and told to find all occurrences of that verb in the text, regardless of tense. That can be useful for highlighting irregular past tenses. Vocabulary Repetition

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Level: Beginner Group size: Groups of up to 8 students Materials: None Preparation: None  This is excellent for learning new vocabulary. vocabulary. It's very easy, non-threatening and provides students stud ents the opportunit opportunity y to get their chops round round new vocabulary. vocabulary. Seat the adu adults lts in a circle if possible, in groups of up to 8 adults. 5 per group would be better. Start the game saying "one hat". Each student repeats repeats this until it com comes es back to you o orr goes a full circ circle le round the group. Now add a new vocabulary item, "one hat, two gloves" and this goes full

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circle round the group. Add a third item and so on. Use with any vocabulary or to drill short sentences using specific grammar. What Or Who Am I?

 

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Category: Step 5 Speaking Fluency Group size: All class sizes Level: Intermediate to Advanced Materials: None Preparation: Find product advertisements to use in class or think of people who can be mystery characters the others must guess Let your students think up a product that they have seen advertised recently. Give them Englis Eng lish h magaz magazine ines s to fli flip p throug through h briefl briefly y if necess necessary ary.. Wit With h studen students ts in pai pairs rs give give a minute time limit for one student in each pair to figure out the other student's product by asking questions. Students can ask anything about the product but not what it is. Before you play brainstorm with the class for suitable questions. When the minute is up blow a whistle and students must swap roles. After that minute is up blow the whistle again and students swap pairs. You can be on hand helping students form questions and listening for common errors to pick up on and correct at the end. A variation variation on how to play is to allow five students students to think up a mystery character. character. The rest of the class divide into groups and have two minutes to interview the mystery character to find out who he or she is. When the two minutes are up give a signal and groups move on until they have been round all the mystery people. Then see which group has guessed guessed the most most charac character ters s correc correctly tly.. The lar larger ger your your class class the more more myster mystery y characters you would have. You ideally want a ratio of one mystery person to 3 to 5 students asking questions. Which One Has Gone

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill Group size: All class sizes but best in small groups Level: Beginner Materials: Picture flashcards or words Preparation: None Put up a set of picture cards on the board and ask the students to close their eyes. Take away one of the cards on the board and say: Which one has gone? Students now open their eyes, identify and name the missing picture as fast as possible.  You can take away more than one picture at a time if you wish. You can also move the pictures around in between goes as long as you keep up the pace so as not to waste time. You can bring up the winners to ask the question and take the pictures away to give the others a chance to answer. With a large class divide it into groups; give each group a set of pictures, which the students lay on their tables. You then need a caller for each group, and everyone can have a turn at this. Word Association

 

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Category: Speaking for Vocabulary revision Level: All Intermediate Levels Group size: Divide students into pairs or groups of three or four Materials: None Preparation: None One student says a word such as elephant and the next student says a related word such as grey, leg or big. You can play this in pairs, in small small groups or by dividing the class into teams.

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Word Chain

 

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Category: Spelling and Vocabulary Review Level: All Intermediate Levels Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: None Divide students in teams with one team member from each team at the board. The team members memb ers at the board board each write up a word. Team members members now make a word chain by finding findi ng either a word that rhymes rhymes with the word on the board, or a word that starts starts with the same sound. Teams race to make the longest l ongest chain in a given time frame. Here is an example: example: Trick. Try starts with the same TR sound sound or prick rhymes with trick. So a chain might look like this: Trick, thick, thank, thin, pin, pick, sick, sit, fit, pit, pink, think, and so on. Word Chain – Change One Letter

 

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Category: Spelling and Vocabulary Review Level: All Intermediate Levels. Advanced students can enjoy playing this briefly. Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: None Divide the class into teams. One member from each team writes a word on the board. Have Hav e all teams workin working g simult simultane aneous ously ly and not one after after the other. other. Someon Someone e else else from each team then changes one letter of the word to make a different word. Allow a fixed time limit for this and see which team has the longest chain of words at the end. Here are some examples: Coat, coal, foal, foil, toil, soil, sail, nail, bail, ball, fall, call, tall, tale, male, pale, sale. You see see that that only only one one le lett tter er ca can n be ch chan ange ged. d. If yo you u want want to make make it ea easi sier er for for lowe lowerr intermediates you can allow two letters to be changed, and the order of the letters. Equally Equa lly you could allow for a lette letterr to be added or taken taken away to give more possibilities possibilities for finding words. Word Chain –Round the Alphabet

 

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Category: Speaking for Vocabulary Review Level: Beginner to Intermediate Group size: Any Materials: None Preparation: None Students go around the letters of the alphabet in a theme such as countries: Afghanistan, Belgium, Congo, Denmark, Ethiopia, etc. If you have a big class divide it and have two or more groups so students do not wait forever between turns. Another way to organise the class is to have one big group but with students in threes and any one of the three can give an answer when the word reaches reaches them. This helps avoid delays when when someone is stuck. If a person takes longer than ten seconds to find an answer they skip a turn and the word moves on to the next person. Subjects to use include: Countries or Independent States Cities Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs Food items

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Items you can buy Movies Names Famous people Space Sports Hospitals  The game will move faster if you tell the students to prepare for it for homework. Demonstrate how the game works and then give students the theme or themes that you willl use in the next lesson. wil lesson. Genera Generall knowle knowledge dge catego categorie ries s usuall usually y go down well as students feel they are learning on two levels, English and general knowledge.  This can be played as a competition where people are out if they cannot think of a word, or as a collaborative game where the goal is for the team to make it round the alphabet.  You can have two teams working together racing to be the first to complete the task, which is then performed performed in front front of the other other team. Using the collaborative method will mean much more repetition as the team try to make it through the letters. Word Order

 

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Category: Step 1 Listening Drill Group size: 4 to 30 players divided into small groups Level: Beginner to Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: Prepare sentences that you will jumble Read out a short sentence with the word order jumbled up. Students listen and call out the correct order. If students cannot do this quickly the sentences are too hard or too varied. To use for drilling stick to sentences with identical structure or grammar such as: I gave you a rose, he gave me a rose, she gave him a rose, they gave her a rose, and so on. A simpler example is: I like biscuits, she likes coffee, they like jam and so on. With students in teams let each team have a few seconds to reply before opening the floor to all teams. A team member can only answer out loud once and must whisper the answer to another team member instead if no one on the team has the answer. This keeps all players involved and prevents one person from giving all the answers. Write It Up

 

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Category: Writing Drill Group size: All class sizes Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: None Preparation: None Divide the class into teams and number the players in each team. Give an example of a sent senten ence ce that that us uses es the the gram gramma marr yo you u want want to work work with with,, for for ex exam ampl ple e past past tens tense: e:  Yesterday I walked the dog. Now give the class fifteen seconds to think up their own sentence sent ence in the simple simple past. Call out one of the team team numbers, say say number 3. All the number 3s come quickly to the board and write up the sentence they have thought of, such as, yesterday I cleaned my teeth. If slower students want to copy from a brighter classmate that is OK - this is not a cheat, but a learning experience. Have the class make sure the sentences written up are correct. While this has been going on all class members are thinking up a sentence to follow the one on the board, which would be a different sentence using the same grammar. Call out another team number, say 1, the number ones come up and write up their version of the sentence, and so on. Have a rule where no sentence may be repeated on the board.

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Use short simple sentences with beginners. You may also use this game for single words to practise vocabulary and spelling. Writing Relay

 

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Category: Step 6 Writing Drill Group size: All sizes divided into teams Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Class board and several chalks or board pens Preparation: None Divide the class into teams logically according to existing seating. Draw one column per team on the board. Write up a different letter in each column. One student from each team comes up to the board and writes a word starting with that letter in the column for his or her team. When done the second student in the team comes up and so on. When the first team has finished the game is over. Students may use dictionaries at their desks but not at the board. Here is an example for two teams finding adverbs: A adoringly B beautifully C cleverly D dutifully

A angrily B bluntly C cunningly D dully

Variations are to specify whether the word must be a noun, an adverb, verb or adjective.  You may not even specify a certain letter to make it easier for beginners however you probably do want a rule where no word can be repeated anywhere on the board. At the end award points for the number of words spelled correctly. It is a good idea to let the teams have a chance to correct spelling mistakes they notice before counting up the points. Let the students work out what the points are for each team rather than you. Zip Zap Vocabulary Revision

 

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Category: Step 2 Speaking Drill for Vocabulary Review Group size: Small group Level: Beginner to Lower Intermediate Materials: Picture flashcards Preparation: None  This is a fun vocabulary revision game to play for 5 minutes. It gives students students a chance to stand up and move from their desks. It makes the mind alert and gives everyone a chance to say a few words and revise vocabulary. It is too easy for advanced players. Players form a circle, each one holding a picture card. One player stands stands in the middle of the circle. In turn everyone then names his or her picture while each person remembers the cards on his or her left and right. The player in the middle then points a finger at one of the players in the circle and says ZIP-1,2,3,4,5. The student being pointed at must then name the card on his or her left. If the player in the middle says ZAP-1,2,3,4,5 then the student being pointed at must name the picture card on his or her right, without looking of cou course rse.. If succes successfu sfull the person person in the middle middle repeat repeats s the exercise exercise with anothe anotherr student. If unsuccessful that student swaps places with the person in the middle.

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Jokes

 

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 These jokes came came from emails and Internet. I don't know who the authors ar are e and I don't claim to have made them them up myself. I have deliberately stuck to innocent innocent jokes that avoid sensitive issues (mostly). One day, a man was walking in the park and he found a penguin. He was shocked and he didn't know what to do. Finally he decided to take the penguin to the police station. At the police station, he told the police officer what had happened.  The police officer said, said, "You must take this penguin penguin to the zoo." The man said, "That' "That's sa good idea! I will take the penguin penguin to the zoo now!" So he took the penguin to the zoo. zoo.  The next day, the police officer officer was walking in the street and he saw the man with the penguin.  The police officer said, said, "Why didn't you take the penguin to the z zoo oo "  The man said, "I did, we went to the the zoo yesterday, toda today y we are going to the cinema." **********  There was a man walking walking in the desert and he didn't have any water tto o drink, he was really thirsty. Suddenly he saw saw a man riding a donkey. donkey. He ran to the man and and said, "Water, water, I need water!" But the man on the donkey said, "I'm sorry, I haven't got any water but I have got a lot of ties, blue ties, yellow ties, green ties, every colour. They are very cheap! Would you like to buy one?"  The man said, "No, I don't want want a tie, I need water." And he continued walking. A short time later, he saw saw another man riding a camel. He ran to the man and he said said,, "Water, water, I need water!" But the man on the camel said, "I'm sorry, I haven't got any water but I have got a lot l ot of shirts, blue shirts, yellow shirts, green shirts, every colour. They are very cheap! Would you like to buy one?"  The man didn't buy a shirt, he continued continued walking. Finally, the man saw a restaurant restaurant in the middle of the dese desert. rt. He ran to the restauran restaurantt and said, "Water, water, I need water!"   But the man at the door said, "I'm sorry, you can't come in without a shirt and tie." **********  There was a little dog dog and it was very happy because it wa was s going to go to school fo forr the first time. The little dog's mother mother kissed the little dog and said, "Have "Have a good day at school and come straight straight home after school." school." Then the little dog went to sc school. hool. In the evening, the little dog came home home from school. The little dog's moth mother er asked the little dog, "What did you learn at school today?"  The little dog said, "We studied studied foreign languages today." His mother was surprised, "Which foreign language did you study " And the little dog said, "Meow."

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One Monday morning, John was lying in bed and his mother came into the bedroom and said, "Wake up John ! It's time to go to school." But John said, "I don't want to go to school." Five minutes later His mother said, "Wake up John! I’ve made your breakfast, you must eat it before you go to school." But John said, "I don't want to go to school." Five minutes later his mother said " Wake up John ! If you don't wake up now, you'll be late for school." But John said, "I don't want to go to school." His mother said, "But you have to go to school."  John said, "Why do I have to go to school?" His mother said, "Because you are a teacher."

**********  There was a man who had had an accident and he hurt his hands so he he had to go to hospita hospital. l.  The doctor put some bandages bandages on his hands and told him to co come me back one week later. When the man came back to the hospital one week later, the doctor took off the bandages and the man asked the doctor, "Can I play the piano now?"  The doctor said, "Of course course you can play the piano." piano."  The man said, "That's "That's unbelievable because I couldn't couldn't play the piano before the accident." ********** One day, a man found an old lamp and when he started cleaning it, a genie came out of it.  The genie said, "I am the genie of of the lamp. You have got three three wishes, what would you like?"  The man thought about this for for a few seconds and then he s said, aid, "Can I have a bottle of whisky?" Suddenly, there was a loud noise and a big flash and the man was holding a bottle of whisky. He opened the bottle and he started drinking the whisky. But after drinking a lot of whisky the bottle was still full. The genie said, " This is a never-ending bottle of whisky, you can drink as much as you want and the bottle will always be full "  Then the genie said, "You "You have got two more wishes, wha whatt would you like?" And the man said, "Can I have two more bottles of whisky?"

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 John had been looking for a job for a long time and finally he fo found und a job at the zoo. But on his first day, his new boss came to him and said "We have got a big problem and we need your help! Our gorilla died at the weekend and we need a new gorilla but we haven't got enough money at the moment. You will have to put on this gorilla costume and sit in the gorilla cage. Everyone will think that you are the gorilla."  John wasn't too happy about this but he needed the job so he did what his boss wanted. After a few weeks, John began to enjoy being the gorilla. He ran around his cage and he  jumped and danced for all the people. people. In a short time he became the m most ost popular animal in the zoo. One day, he was swinging very high in his cage and suddenly he flew off his branch and fell into the lion's cage. cage. Of course John was afraid afraid and he began to shout "Help me! H Help elp me!"  The lion ran and jumped on John and said; said; "Shut up or everyone will lose th their eir jobs." ********** Dave, Kev and Shazza were driving along the road one day when suddenly a policeman stopped Dave's car.  The policeman said, "I have have been waiting here all day and you are the the first person I saw who is wearing a seat belt. I'm going to give you $500 as a reward." Dave was very happy and he said "Great! Now I can get a driving license with this money" And Shazza said, "And we can buy more alcohol." And Kev said, "Shut up, we mustn't drink in a stolen car." ********** A ship sank and three sailors were stranded on a small island. For 20 years they couldn't go home. One day, when they were walking on the beach, beach, they found an old lamp and when they cleaned it, a genie came out.  The genie said to them "I "I will do whatever you want, you can ha have ve one wish each."  The first man said, "I want to to go home and see my beaut beautiful iful wife again!"  The genie clapped his hands and and the man disappeared.  The second man said, said, "I want to go home and see my bea beautiful utiful wife again!"  The genie clapped his hands and and the man disappeared.  The genie turned to the third man and and said, "What do you want?" And the third man said, "Can I have my two friends back." ********** One day, a man came to the hospital with two burnt ears.  The doctor was very surprised surprised to see this and he ask asked ed the man what had happened.  The man said, "I was ironing ironing my clothes when the telephone rang rang,, I thought it the telephone was the iron so I picked it up and I burned my ear." "How did you burn the other ear?" the doctor asked.  The man said, "They called called me back."

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**********

 

Attention: potentially sensitive joke

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A priest and a bank robber were playing golf together one Sunday afternoon. The bank robber missed a shot and he said, "My God, I missed."  The priest said, "Please "Please do not use the Lord's name name in vain." A short time later, the bank robber missed another shot and he shouted, "Oh my God! I missed!"  The priest said, " Please Please do not use the Lord's name name in vain." At that point the clouds opened above their heads and a flash of lightening came down from the sky and hit the priest. He died instantly.  Then a voice came came from the sky, "Oh oh, I missed! missed!"" **********  TEACHER: Maria, go to the map map and find North America. MARIA: Here it is.  TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered discovered America? CLASS: Maria. **********  TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication multiplication on the floor?  JOHN: You told me to do it without without using tables. **********  TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?' 'crocodile?' GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'  TEACHER: No, that's wrong GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.   **********  TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical chemical formula for water? DONALD: H I J K L M N O.  TEACHER: What are you talking about? about? DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O. **********  TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have have today that we didn't have ten years ago. WINNIE: Me! **********  TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty? GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are. **********  TEACHER: MILLIE:  TEACHER: MILLIE:

Millie, give me a sentence sentence starting with ' I. ' I is.. No, Millie..... Always say, 'I'I am.' All right... 'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'

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**********

   TEACHER: SIMON:

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Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you you say prayers before eating eating? ? No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook. **********

 TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on 'My 'My Dog' is exactly the sa same me as your brother's. Did you copy his? CLYDE : No, sir. It's the same dog.   **********  TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person person who keeps on talking when peo people ple are no longer interested? HAROLD: A teacher ********** Attention: potentially sensitive. sensitive. Change the names to Paul Paul and Mike to be more neutral. neutral. Bubba applied for an engineering position at a Lake Charles refinery. A Yankee applied for the same job and both applicants having the same qualifications were asked to take a test by the manager. Upon completion of the test, both men only missed one of the questions. The manager went to Bubba and said: "Thank you for your interest, but we've decided to give the Yankee the job." Bubba asked: "And why are you you giving him the job? We both got nine questions correct. correct.  This being Louisiana, Louisiana, and me being a Southern boy I should get the job! job!""  The manager said: "We have have made our decision not on on the correct answers, but rathe ratherr on the one question that you both missed." Bubba then asked: "And just how would one incorrect answer be better than the other?"  The manager replied: "Bubba, its like this. On question #4 the Yankee put down; "I don't know."  You put down, "Neither do I."   **********   0 Things to say To Calm A Woman Woman Down During an Argument

Warning: Potentially sensitive. People who take take things very seriously seriously will be offended, offended, especially women. 1.Don't you have some laundry to do or something? 2.Oh, you are so cute when you get cross. 3.You're just upset because your butt is beginning to spread. 4.Wait a minute - I get it. What time of the month is it? 5.Shouldn't you consult the great Oprah on this one? 6.Sorry. I was just picturing you naked. 7.Whoa, time out. Football is on. 8.Looks like someone had an extra bowl of B#%$@! flakes this morning! 9.Is there any way we can do this via e-mail? 10.Who are you kidding? We both know that thing isn't loaded

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A Test: to find out whether you learn from your mistakes Here's a humorous quiz to do in pairs – received from a ema email il being sent around. Student A has the questions and correct answers. Student A asks asks the first first question. Student B answers as he/she he/she sees fit. Student A then reads the correct answer and the diagnosis. Student A then continues to question 2. Q1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator? Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and close the door. Diagnosis:  This question tests whether whether you tend to do simple things in an an overly complicated way. Q2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator? Incorrect Answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator. Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions. Q3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend? Correct Answer:  The Elephant, since it is still still in the refrigerator.  This tests your memory. memory. OK, even if you did not answer the first 3 questions correctly, you still have 1 more chance to show your true abilities. Q4. There is a river you must cross but it is inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it? Correct Answer:  You swim across. across. All the crocodiles are atten attending ding the Animal Meeting.  This tests whether you you learn quickly from your mistakes. mistakes. According to Anderson Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong. But many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a 4 year old.

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Metaphors

 

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Here is a collection of metaphors to use with w ith Call My Bluff Definitions or Definitions  or Pairs Pairs..  If playing Pairs use the metaphor and correct definition only. If playing Call May Bluff the first definition is true while the second and third are false. Airhead

Someone who is disorganised or a bit stupid A head with a huge amount of hair A capsule that prevents air coming out of a bicycle tire

Road hog

An aggressive drive who takes over the road A hog that has been run over A type of pig that uses roads to migrate

Rug rat

A child A rat with a lot of fur A pet rat

Couch po potato

A sl slob wh who spends al all d da ay watching TV TV A dish made of layers of cheese and potato A potato with a long flat shape

An old flame

A warm reception

 To go smoothly smoothly

An ex-girl or boyfriend A fire that has nearly gone out  The name given to the flame flame lit at the Olympics When someone is welcoming A party given in a warm room A wedding reception with a lot of guests When things are going well When you drive on a road that has no bumps  The smooth feel of of your hair after you have brushed it

Shades of of grey

When th things ar are no not clear Sunglasses with grey lenses Art work that is mostly made up of greys, blacks and whites.

Black and white

Things are clear A type of chocolate bar Fair skinned people in dark suits

A dim view

When you do not agree with or approve of something When your eyesight is suffering When you cannot see from lack of sufficient light

A beacon

Someone who inspires through example A ditch A species of hunting dog Some Someon one e of of dub dubio ious us mora morals ls A character who makes sun shades A person who prefers the shade to the sun

A shad shady y cha chara ract cter er

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  Good ta taste

 To bite your lip

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When so someone lliikes yo your st style or or tth hings th they sa say yo you h ha ave th this When food is good it has good taste When your mother makes your favourite dish To change your mind about saying saying something When you need stitches in your lip When you are deep in thought and squeeze your lip between your teeth

 To come to the point point To finally say what you you mean  To reach the edge of a cliff cliff where land meets sea  To decide not to do something something after all  To spit it out

Cold Turkey

Cold feet

To say something  To find an idea immoral or disgusting disgusting  To spit over a great distance distance When a drug addict goes into withdrawal symptoms  The favourite Christmas Christmas dish in England at midday When you feel too scared to do something When you feel to scared to do something When you have poor circulation When you do something without a warm up

Bowels of the building In the cellars or lower parts of a building In the toilets  The plumbing system of a building Room to to grow

 To hit a brick wall

Space to allow for inner or or physical gr growth A heated room for rapid plant growth A room where you meditate and read books on personal development To come up against an insurmountable insurmountable obstacle  To replace missing bricks in a brick brick wall  To disagree with someone someone

A bla blank nket et of snow snow

A lay layer er of snow snow on th the e gro groun und d A white blanket A blanket with pictures of snow on it

A weig weight hty y subj subjec ectt

An impo import rtan antt matt matter er A heavy person A weighty person wishing to embark on a diet

A light light conversat conversation ion A chat about about fun or trivial trivial things things A conversation about lighting A short conversation or dialogue  You could use this sa same me idea with similes: As cold as ice When someone is not welcoming When you have a cold When your body drops to sub zero temperatures Another activity that involves your students and encourages creativity is to ask them to make up their own metaphors or similes and discuss them with other students.

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Riddles

 

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I received these amusing riddles via an email that was being forwarded around the Internet. Use them with the Match Match Up Game. Game. School A place where Papa pays and Son plays. Life Insurance A contract that keeps you poor all your life so that you can die Rich. Nurse A person who wakes you up to give you sleeping pills. Marriage It's an agreement in which a man loses his bachelor degree and a woman gains her masters. Divorce Future tense of Marriage.  Tears  The hydraulic force by which masculine masculine willpower is defeated by ffeminine eminine water power. Lecture An art of transferring information from the notes of the Lecturer to the notes of the students without passing through "the minds of either" Conference  The confusion of one one man multiplied by the number present. Compromise  The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes believes he got the biggest piece. Dictionary A place where success comes before work. Conference Room A place where everybody talks, nobody listens and everybody disagrees later on. Father A banker provided by nature. Criminal A guy no different from the rest....except that he got caught. Boss Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early

****** 1. What do you call a deer with no eyes? A: No eye deer (no idea) What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs? A: Still no eye deer. 2. Forward I'm heavy, but backwards I'm not. What am I? A Ton

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3. If you have it, you want to to share it. If you share it, you don't don't have it. What is it? A secret 4. In Oklahoma, you cannot take a picture of a man with a sign. Why not?  You need a camera not not a sign to take a picture.   5. The more you have of it, the less you see. What is it? Darkness 6. What What is the middle of nowhere? nowhere? H 7. What do you throw out when you want to use it, but take in when you don't want to use it? An anchor 8. Which letter is not me?

U

9. Which is the most self-centred letter?

I

10. What letter has the most amount of water?

C

11. Who is bigger, Mr Bigger or Mr Bigger's son? Mr Bigger's son, as he is a little Bigger 12. Tom's mother has three children. One is named April, one is named May. What is the third one named?  Tom 13. Two women apply for a job. They are identical. They have the same mother, father, birthdays, height, weight, and so on. The interviewer asks, "Are you twins?" They say, "No". Why did they say say they weren't twins?  They were triplets – one of of them wasn't there. 14. Why is a maths book always sad? Because it is full of problems 15. The one who made it didn't didn't want it. The one who bought it didn't need it. it. The one who used it never saw it. What is it? A coffin 16. What can burn the eyes, sting the mouth, and yet be eaten? A chilli pepper 17. What crawls on four, then walks on two, then on three? A man 18. If your uncle's sister is related to you but is not your aunt what is the relation?  Your mother 19. Do you know if the Catholic church allows a man to marry his widow's sister? A dead man cannot marry   20. Can someone marry his brother's wife's mother in law? A man cannot marry his own mother 21. What are 2 things people don't eat before breakfast? Lunch and dinner

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Proverbs

 

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A collection of proverbs to use in the games Pairs or Call My Bluff Definitions

A bad penny always turns up A bad workman always blames his tools A bargain is something you don't need at a price you can't resist A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush A blessing in disguise A friend in need is a friend indeed A friend to all is a friend to none A jack of all trades is a master of none A little knowledge is a dangerous thing A miss is as good as a mile A penny saved is a penny earned A picture is worth a thousand words A rolling stone gathers no moss A stitch in time saves nine A watched pot never boils A woman's work is never done A word to the wise is sufficient Absence makes the heart grow fonder Actions speak louder than words All's fair in love and war All roads lead to Rome All's well that ends well All that glitters is not gold All things come to him who waits All work and no play An apple a day keeps the doctor away An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth April showers bring May flowers

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  As fit as a fiddle Beauty is in the eye of the beholder Beauty is only skin deep Beggars can't be choosers Better late than never Better safe than sorry Better the devil you know than the one you don't Boys will be boys Birds of a feather flock together Blood is thicker than water Can't see the woods for the trees Charity begins at home Cleanliness is next to godliness Damned if you do and damned if you don't Don't bite the hand that fees you Don't burn your bridges Don't count your chickens until they're hatched Don't cut off your nose to spite your face Don't judge a book by it's cover Don't look a gift horse in the mouth Don't put all your eggs in one basket Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater  There's no use crying over over spilt milk Early to bed and early to rise Every cloud has a silver lining Familiarity breeds contempt First come first served First things first Fools rush in where angels fear to tread Good fences make good neighbours

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Go with the flow Give and take Great minds think alike Half a loaf is better than none Handsome is as handsome does He who generalises, generally lies Heaven helps those who help themselves Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned His bark is worse than his bite Honesty is the best policy Horses for courses Ignorance is bliss If a job is worth doing it's worth doing well If at first you don't succeed, try, try again If it ain't broke, don't fix it If you can't beat them, join them If you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen In for a penny, in for a pound It never rains, it pours It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all It takes a thief to catch a thief  It takes all sorts to make a world go round It takes two to tango I want doesn't get! Learn to walk before you try to run Let sleeping dogs lie Life begins at forty Life is what you make of it Like father like son Like water off a duck's back

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Live and let live Look before you leap Love is blind Make hay while the sun shines Many hands make light work Mind your P's and Q's Money for old rope Money can't buy happiness More haste less speed Necessity is the mother of invention No man is an island No pain, no gain Nothing ventured, nothing gained Once bitten, twice shy One man's meat is another man's poison Out of the frying pan, into the fire Out of sight, out of mind Patience is a virtue Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely Practice makes perfect Rome wasn't built in a day Seek and ye shall find Six of one and half a dozen of the other Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me Speak of the devil Still waters run deep Strike while the iron is hot  The ball is in your court  The best is yet to come come  The best things in life are free free

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   The calm before the storm storm  The early bird catches the worm worm  The grass is always greener greener on the other side of the the fence  The pen is mightier than the sword sword  The proof is in the pudding  There are no endings, only new beginnings  There are three types of of lies, lies, damned lies and statistics statistics  There's a method to this this madness  There is more than one way way to skin a cat  There's no accounting accounting for taste  There's no peace for for the wicked  There's no place like home  There's no such thing as a free lunch  There's no room to swing swing a cat  Think before you speak speak  Time flies  Time waits for no man man  To bark up the wrong tree  To be born with a silver spoon spoon in your mouth  To each, his own  To dig yourself into a hole hole  To keep up with the Joneses  To kill the goose that that lays the golden egg  To know on which side your your bread is buttered  To make a mountain mountain out of a molehill  Tomorrow is another another day  To put your foot in it  To talk the hind legs off a donkey  Too many cooks spoil the broth

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   Table of Contents Contents / Detailed Index  Too many irons in the fire fire  Two heads are better than one  Two wrongs don't make a right Up a creek without a paddle Variety is the spice of life  You can't have it both both ways  You can't have your your cake and eat it  You can't teach an old old dog new tricks  You can't win them all  You made your bed so you you must lie in it  You reap what you sow sow  You scratch my back back and I'll scratch yours  You win some, you lose lose some Waste not, want not We'll cross that bridge when we come to it What goes around comes around What goes up must come down What you see is what you get When in Rome do as the Romans do When one door closes another one opens A wolf in sheep's clothing  

Table of Contents  / Detailed Index

Other Resources I hope that this book of games brings much joy to your your classrooms. If the comments that I have had from hundreds of teachers are anything to go by then It surely will. Here is a list of my other resources, which may be useful if you teach a variety of ages or class sizes.

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  , Primary games book, flashcards and lesson plans .

Games book for children aged 6 to 12, handling all class sizes. If you have very big preschool you need moregroups gamesand for large classes this book would help. Over six hundred printable flashcards in vocabulary themes, in three sizes, and being added to all the time. Elementary lesson plans to help get teachers started using games. http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/4-12.htm

2. Plays and Skits for Children

Plays and skits for small groups up to 15 students. Also for use one on one. For beginners aged 4 to 12. Simple repetitive skits with a touch of Easily adapted to higher levels.

humour.

http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/eslplays.htm

Making Robots for a Skit on body parts and commands

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3. One to One Games and Video •

•

•

Games for private tutors and parents With video demonstrations For ages 4 to 12 www.homeenglishteacher.com

4. & 5. Preschool Games and Stories

to 0 with Songs

 Ten stories covering basic basic vocabulary themes themes and useful vocabulary vocabulary with a fun games book for preschoolers and young primary.

www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm

With Songs and Masks of Story Characters and Songs Activity Book

6. & 7. Teaching English Songs 2 and 3 – CD or mp3

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www.teachingenglishgames.com/eslsongs3.htm

8. 0 x Follow-on Stories

to 20 with Lesson Plans

More stories covering actions, family members, rooms of the house, nature, light and dark, verbs, farm animals, body parts, clothing and other useful vocabulary.

http://www.teachingenglishgames.com teachingenglishgames.com/3-5/preschoolstor /3-5/preschoolstories.htm ies.htm http://www.

9. 0 x Stories for Special Days in the Year For preschool and young primary children

Stories with lesson plans, flashcards, colouring and illustrations Birthday Halloween Thanksgiving

Ground hog Day Valentine's Day Easter Bunny

April Fools' Day Christmas Mother's Day Summer Holiday Adventure

www.teachingenglishgames.com/eslstory.htm