Teach English as a Foreign Language

No prep time
Need some blank paper
Pre intermediate
5-10 mins

One of the most fun warm ups I do is making a group story – its best in smallish groups of 5-8 and is very simple.

Each student gets a paper and is allowed to write one word before passing it onto the next student. They then have to continue the story. Very simple but great for developing sentences under pressure as they have to absorb the sentence and generate more. This means quick thinking and trying to find a word which makes sense.

From the feedback you can work on grammar errors which crop up. Just take a sentence and write it on the board and ask for corrections.

I feel that the trick of learning English, or any language, is a communicative approach – that is to achieve goals other than the goal of learning the language! By this I mean a communication activity where the goal is to get information from someone and the language becomes the process or the method and not the goal itself.

This serves two purposes – distraction away from the boring task of learning words, grammar etc without a context, and a wider cognitive goal of having to think through a process, hopefully a real world communication situation, and deal with it sucessfully. This prepares the learner for actual contact and language use in daily life.

Anyways, not always easy to do with schoolkids who’s main motiation seems to be looking cool and mucking about – and with good reason – most of them won’t need English for several years yet -if at all? – so it remains abstract and just another lesson in the daily grind.

So for me the question is how to generate a bit of tension and excitement to wake them up and get them interested while trying to use the language as a goal orientated process.

Not easy!

Anyways, one game I’ve been turned onto by a colleague is using a toy bomb which ticks down. Here is a picture (Japanese).

I use this to get the kids to use language against the clock. Stand in a circle and then get them to ask questions in the target language or free questions if they are more advanced. The questioner holds the bomb, asks the question and passes it onto the next person who has to answer quickly and then ask another question.

If it explodes then that person is out or their team loses points etc.

Although not my ideal goal for real world communication it works on the students’ language in the following way:

Repeated verbal practice of the target language.
Quick thinking to formulate and answer a question.
Listening practice.

The time element adds the tension and keeps the kids excited, as well as increasing their cognitive processing speed.

If you would like to get one of these bombs then please contact me, or you can buy online through the rakuten.com website (if your Japanese is upto it!).

Type: scoring system
Setup: 20mins to make the cards
Length: NA.

This is a scoring system which I invented around Halloween time.

If you’re running a competitive game with a score then you can spice things up with life or death cards.

The cards comprise a set of point cards (-20,-10,0,10,20 etc) as well as two special jokers a typhoon and a tsunami.

Typhoon means that all the scores from every team are swept away, and Tsunami means that that team’s points are given to another team.

There are also life cards (I use a picture of a baby) and death cards (a suitably comic skull or crossbones etc). Death card means that the chooser can “kill” someone on his/her own or another team. Life card means that they can bring anyone back to like, if they wish.

If a team member wins a point in the game you are playng, they have to take a card to score, and accept the consequences of the card they picked.

Although this is a little evil, the games get really fun when you have teams full of strong rivals, and the chaos when the last card picked is Typhoon and all teams points are gone is awesome. Consistantly getting minus points is really fun too.

I typically have 4 death cards and 2 life cards in a pack, but you can vary this.

You can find pics of babies and skulls etc freely on the internet. I’ve laminated my cards to ensure durability.

Type: verbal, written, concept check
Setup: 1 min
Length: NA.

This is a fun game which can be played in a variety of ways, is quick to setup and can last a while. The idea is to freely associate words going round the class and can be used to concept check vocab as well as spelling and pronunciation.

Start: Introduce the idea of free association by writing a single word on the board and then add a couple more to show that the words have a relationship. I usually use my name, then add teacher, English etc.

Once they get the idea do a trial run by writing another word and inviting free association from class members. Once everyone is onboard you can start the games!

Get students into groups and give them different coloured chalk per team. Divide the board into as many groups as there are, and then instruct the first person in each team to write a word.

Then the first writer has to move across and write an associated word on the other team’s section, once written move on the the other team’s and so on in a round robin style.

Once they have written on each team’s section and are back to their own team, they hand the chalk over to the next member of their team and start again. Great chaos and screaming, add tension with a time limit.

When its over, check associations and spellings – sometimes you’ll get a funny association that has no match and it’s fun to find out what was going!

Another way is to give each student a piece of paper and then have them all write a word at the top and when you clap your hands they pass it on to the left or right. You can double clap and that means reverse direction. Again great fun if you start slow and build up speed!

You can also do the same thing verbally with students in circles going round, or add a ball which the student passes to their friend (or enemy) to randomize the process a little. Can be great fun if pronunciation is off and the association starts going wild!

When the dust has settled give feedback on pronunciation or spelling or relationships between the words (clarifying meaning and concepts).