hi, I would like to share about English Language Games that teachers can use when Teaching English as Second or Foreign Language. sometimes its hard for teacher to encourage students to participate in English classroom activities. In order to solve that problems teachers should find a good techniques. I think one of good technique in teaching English is through Language Games. Here some examples of language games:
Bad
Fruit: A Shoppers' Nightmare
Level: Easy to Medium
This is an oral communication
activity appropriate for EFL learners in elementary/primary school. (It's
optimal for grades 3-6). This game is designed for practicing
"shopping" dialogues and vocabulary.
Materials: "produce" and play money.
Object of Game: To accumulate as many products as possible.
Students are divided into clerks and shoppers.
The clerks set up "stands" to allow easy access for all shoppers (e.g. around the outsides of the room with their backs to the wall).
The shoppers are given a set amount of money* (e.g. dollars, euros, pounds, etc.) and begin at a stand where there is an open space.
Students shop, trying to accumulate as many items as possible (each item is 1 unit of currency).
Periodically, the instructor will say "stop" (a bell or other device may be needed to attract attention in some cultural and classroom contexts) and call out a name of one of the products. Students with that product must then put ALL their products in a basket at the front of the room. The remaining students continue shopping. Students who had to dump their products must begin again from scratch (with fewer units of currency).
The student with the most products at the end wins.
Students then switch roles.
The clerks set up "stands" to allow easy access for all shoppers (e.g. around the outsides of the room with their backs to the wall).
The shoppers are given a set amount of money* (e.g. dollars, euros, pounds, etc.) and begin at a stand where there is an open space.
Students shop, trying to accumulate as many items as possible (each item is 1 unit of currency).
Periodically, the instructor will say "stop" (a bell or other device may be needed to attract attention in some cultural and classroom contexts) and call out a name of one of the products. Students with that product must then put ALL their products in a basket at the front of the room. The remaining students continue shopping. Students who had to dump their products must begin again from scratch (with fewer units of currency).
The student with the most products at the end wins.
Students then switch roles.
*It is recommended giving students
as much money as possible since students who run out can no longer participate.
Alternative play for more advanced
students: Clerks set the price of items.
Shoppers have the option of negotiating the price. There are two winners in
this version: The shopper who accumulates the most products and the clerk who
makes the most money.
Submitted by: Mike Yough
What's
the Question?
Level: Any Level
Type of Activity: listening and speaking
Purpose: review question forms previously studied in class
Procedure:
Form two teams (three will work, but two seems to add just the right amount of competitive tension).
Type of Activity: listening and speaking
Purpose: review question forms previously studied in class
Procedure:
Form two teams (three will work, but two seems to add just the right amount of competitive tension).
Explain the game, with a few
examples of answers in search of questions. Ask, 'What's the question?', and
get students to correctly say the corresponding questions for your answer.
Have two players--one from each
team--come to the front. Style it like a game show if you like, with the
students standing side-by-side. If you have access to bells or buzzers, it's
even more fun.
Next, read an answer to a question
and say, 'What's the question?' The fastest player to respond wins a point for
her/his team. New contestants come to the front for a new round.
Rationale: This game forces the students to think backwards a little,
so they must provide a grammatically perfect question. All too often, they are
used to answering rather than asking questions, so this is challenging and
useful as review.
Submitted by: Tim
Toilet
Paper Icebreaker
Level: Any Level
This activity is used as a
"getting to know you", icebreaker on the first day of class.
- Teacher takes the toilet paper roll and takes several
squares of toilet paper, then hands the roll of toilet paper to a student.
The teacher tells the student to take some, more than three.
- After everybody in the class has some paper, we count
the squares we have, then we have to tell that many things about
ourselves, in English.
This activity works well with
substitute teachers also.
The toilet paper is such an attention
getter.
Submitted by: Linda LeBlanc
Chain
Spelling (Shiri-tori)
Level: Easy to Medium
The teacher gives a word and asks a
student to spell it, and then a second student should say a word beginning with
the last letter of the word given. The game continues until someone makes a
mistake, that is, to pronounce the word incorrectly, misspell it or come up
with a word that has been said already, then he/she is out. The last one
remaining in the game is the winner.
This game can be made difficult by
limiting the words to a certain category, e.g.. food, tools, or nouns, verbs,
etc.
Submitted by: Huang Shufang
Bang
Bang
Level: Easy
Divide the group into two teams.
Explain that they are cowboys and they are involved in a duel. One student from
each team comes to the front. Get them to pretend to draw their pistols. Say
"how do you say..." and a word in their mother tongue. The first
child to give the answer and then "bang bang", pretending to shoot
his opponent is the winner. He remains standing and the other one sits down. I
give 1 point for the right answer and 5 extra points if they manage to
"kill" 4 opponents in a row.
Editor's Note: Instead of saying the
word in the students' mother tongue, it would be possible to use a picture or
to say a definition ("What do you call the large gray animal with a long
nose?")
Submitted by: Liz
Battle
Ships - A Vocabulary Game
Level: Easy to Medium
Preparation:
Divide the students in to groups of four or five. Then ask the student to make the name for their ships for example with the names of animals, cities, movie stars or let them find their own favourite names.
Divide the students in to groups of four or five. Then ask the student to make the name for their ships for example with the names of animals, cities, movie stars or let them find their own favourite names.
Ask them to choose the Captain and
the Shooter. The captain's duty is to memorize his ship's name, so he can reply
if somebody call his ship's name. The shooter's duty is to memorize the names
of the ships of 'their enemies', so he can shoot them by calling their ship's
name.
Activity:
Arrange all the captains in a circle, the ships' crews must line up behind their captains. The shooter is the last crew member in line.
Arrange all the captains in a circle, the ships' crews must line up behind their captains. The shooter is the last crew member in line.
The teacher must decide a lexical
area of vocabulary, this vocabulary will be used to defend their ships from the
attacks. Every students (except the shooters) must find their own words. The
lexical area for example, "Four Legged Animals". Give the students
1-2 minutes to find as many possible words as they can and memorize them.
Start the game by calling a ship's
name, for example the ship name is "THE CALIFORNIAN". The captain of
THE CALIFORNIAN must reply with a word from the lexical area given, for example
he says "TIGER" followed by his crews behind him one by one,
"COW"; "SHEEP" until it is the shooter turns and he
calls out the name of another ship and the captain of the ship called must
reply and his crews must do the same thing. No word can be repeated.
If the captain is late to reply
(more than 2 seconds) or his crew can not say the words or a word repeated or
the shooter shoots the wrong ship (his own ship or the ship that has already
been sunk) the ship is sunk, and the crew members can join the crew of another
ship.
The teacher can change the lexical
area for the next round.
In the last round there will be two
big groups battling to be the winner.
Submitted by: Agung Listyawan
Describing
Appearances & Characteristics of People
Level: Easy to Medium (Low to low intermediate)
Each student is then give one sheet
of paper. One student sits at the front of a room. He/she describes
a person and the rest of the class draws the person being described.
It is more interesting if the person
being described is known by everyone. Once the student has finished describing
that person then he/she reveals who it is and each student shows his/her
drawing. The laughter from this is hilarious as the impressions tend to make
the character in question look funny.
It is a good idea to encourage
students to ask the interviewee student questions about who they are
describing.
Submitted by: Darrell
Sentence
Race
Level: Any Level
A good game for large classes and
for reviewing vocabulary lessons.
- Prepare a list of review vocabulary words.
- Write each word on two small pieces of paper. That
means writing the word twice, once on each paper.
- Organize the pieces like bundles, 2 bundles, 2 sets of
identical words.
- Divide the class into 2 teams. get them to make
creative team names.
- Distribute each list of words to both teams. every
student on each team should have a paper. Both teams have the same
words.
- When you call a word, 2 students should stand up, one
from each team. The students must then run to the blackboard and race to
write a sentence using their word.
The winner is the one with a correct
and clearly written sentence.
This is always a hit with kids. For
more advanced students, use tougher words.
Submitted by: Thomas D. J-B
Paper
Airplane Game
Level: Any Level
Draw a target (with points - like a
dart board) on the white board or use a cardboard box in the middle of the
room. Then, students make paper airplanes and launch them after they answer
your question in the form of a sentence. I don't except my beginners/low
intermediate students to form complete sentence so I help them to form correct
sentences. To my surprise they will repeat the sentence several times (while
I'm helping them) just so they can throw their airplane. For beginner and low
intermediate classes, I recommend formulating questions that lead to 1 or 2
types of answers. This allows for better memorization. For example, use
CAN/WILL questions and write the beginning part of the answer on the board
"I can/will...". I recommend giving a prize to make the target
points mean something, thus peaking their interest.
Submitted by: Ell Saunders
Pictionary
(Game 1) - revamp - Charades (Game 2)
Level: Any Level
Write out series of categories like
professions (doctor, bus driver, etc.), animals, foods, actions (fishing,
haircut, etc.) then divide the class into groups of 2. One student draws and
the other guesses. Next turn, the guesser draws and drawer guesses. This game
works best with the arbitrary stop watch (30 seconds). This is designed for one
lesson.
Then for another day take the same
categories (or create new ones) and play the same game except students, this
time, act it out (no speaking or noises).
Submitted by: Ell Saunders
Spelling
Contest
Level: Any Level
First, if you have a large class you
have to divide it in 2 teams. then the teacher says a word or a sentence
depending on the level for the students to spell. Students should spell
these correctly with not even one mistake. The team that has more points is the
winner
Submitted by: Revolle Soyer
What's
the Meaning?
Level: Medium to Difficult
You, the teacher, may need a
dictionary do this activity.
- Choose a word which is long, difficult, and unknown to
the students, a good word to begin with is: warmonger.
- Without using a dictionary, your students write down a
definition. (They can work out the definition in groups of three).
Allow them a few minutes to think and write.
- Collect the definitions and read them aloud.
- When you have finished reading, they will have to vote
which of those is the correct one. (It doesn't matter if none of them is
the correct one)
- After they have voted and none of the groups guessed
the meaning you read the correct one aloud.
The idea of this game is to let
students be creative and practice writing skills.
Then you can have the students to
discuss their writings.
Submitted by: Natalia Iglesias from
Argentina
Catching
up on your ABC's
Level: Any Level
This game is short and simple. Write
the alphabet on the board. Throw a bean bag to someone and say a word begining
with the letter A. This person must catch the bean bag, say a word begining
with the letter B and then throw it to another person This third person says a
word begining with the leter C and so on.
Obviously the game is meant to be
played fast. If played with higher level students you may not want to write the
alphabet on the board. There are many ways to change the game to make it
adaptable to your level of students.
Submitted by: Adam in China
Secret
Code
Level: Any Level
I sometimes give instructions to my
students written in code that they have to interpret before completing tasks.
I've used this at various levels:
Here's an example: to revise
alphabet and simple present verbs/vocab.
- Tell students the code e.g. each code letter represents
the letter that comes before it in the alphabet a is b, m is n, 'dbu' is
cat etc.
- Then they decode their message and do the task:
- xbml up uif cpbse - walk to the board
- kvnq ufo ujnft - jump ten times
To make it more difficult, I've ...
- used more complex codes,
- let them work the code out for themselves,
- have not defined where words end,
- have given more complicated tasks or vocabulary
- or given them half an instruction which they must
decode and then find the classmate with the other half of their task
information.
This activity can be used to review
or practise vocabulary or structure or simply be a different way to introduce
the topic for the day's class -- each student gets one or two words to decode
and then the class work to put all the words together.
Submitted by: Karen Mack
Crazy
Story
Level: Any Level
This is an activity that will make
your students speak in class and be creative.
- Ask students to write a word on a piece of paper and
tell them not to show anyone. This word should be a verb (or whatever
you'd like to rewiew).
- The teacher starts telling a story, then stops and
chooses a student.
- That student will continue the story and must use
his/her word. This student then chooses the next student to continue the
story.
- The last student must end the story.
- After the story is over, the students then try to guess
what words each student has written on his/her paper. The student who
guesses the most words wins the game.
Submitted by: Luciana Pinheiro
Classroom
Rules: Must and Mustn't
Level: Easy to Medium
- Prepare small pieces of paper each with either one
thing students must do or one thing students must not do.
- Tell the students that they are supposed to form
sentences that explain classroom rules.
- Divide the class into groups (of 4 if possible, so that
everyone gets a chance to speak).
- Give each group the pieces of paper.
The winning group, the group that
finishes first, reads their sentences aloud. (Each student of the group reads
one or two sentences depends on size of group.)
It's an easy game and the
preparation does not take too much time. You can make as many rules as you
wish.
Submitted by: Sijeta Braha
