Teaching English

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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: [...]