 Prepositions (eg. in, on, under, from etc) are a major part of speech.
In this game, your students are going to practice forming a chain of prepositions to see who can keep the chain going for longer. A worksheet has been provided for this activity. Objective(s) of activity: Starting from the basic sentence “The girl saw a dog”, students within groups are going to take turns adding preposition phrases to the sentence. Each subsequent preposition must be in a class of meaning (Time, Position, Direction, and ‘Other’) that is different from the previous one. When a person is unable to add anymore prepositions, they have lost the round. Directions: You will use this worksheet to do this activity. There are two tasks that have to be done in the worksheet before you can play this game. These two tasks are to:
Suggested answers are provided in the worksheet. Once this is completed, your students can keep the worksheet in front as a reminder of what the different classes of prepositions are. Now it is time to play the game proper. One person will come up with a sentence that will serve as the base for building prepositions. Eg. John walked the dog. The other person will then have to add a preposition phrase to this sentence. Eg. John walked the dog to the park. The next player will then have to add a preposition phrase to this sentence from the start. However, there are two rules:
The following shows what a good sequence may look like. A: John walked the dog. B: John walked the dog to the park. A: John walked the dog to the park near the beach. B: John walked the dog to the park near the beach over the hill. A: John walked the dog to the park near the beach over the hill after dinner. The round ends when the next person up is unable to recall the sentence correctly or adds a preposition phrase that is from the same class. The memory component is an integral part of the game and so you should not write down the sentence. This will also put a natural cap on the length of sentences. If this memory component is not present, the round can technically go on for a very long time (which is fine if you’re ok with it). The winner of the round can then come up with the next base sentence to add preposition phrases to. Share in the comments how your students did!
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 In this activity, your students will work on creating mini narratives based on the words that are randomly generated. Objective(s) of activity: Learn about narrative structure by coming up with simple stories. However, the narrative that you come up with must include a jumble of words that you randomly pick out from the dictionary. Directions: Do an online search for a random word generator. I found a decent one here which allows you to specify number of syllables, starting/ ending letters and so on. For this activity, you can just pick any 8 words without any of these criteria. Pick out about 8 words from the dictionary or the random word generator. If you are using a physical dictionary, you can flip to a random page and get an age-appropriate word from that page. Using a random word generator online, I picked out the following 8 words.  As with the dictionary, you can select words that you think can be woven into a story more easily with a random word generator. But you do not want to make it too easy. This is also a great opportunity for vocabulary building as you explain words that come up that your students are not familiar with. The next step is to come up with a general narrative that must include all 8 words. You can allow different inflections for the chosen words. Using the words above, this is the short narrative I came up with:  You can do this activity as a competition where groups of students race to come up with a narrative first.
The first group to come up with a narrative can be given 5 points whereas the other groups can be given 3 points. You can then generate a new set of 8 words for the students to create a new narrative. You can also award more points for more interesting or creative stories. Notes for scaling up/ down difficulty: The difficulty level for this activity can be increased or decreased by just increasing/ decreasing the number of words that have to be incorporated into the story. Another way to make the activity more interesting is to fix the genres. For example, in one round, you can require that the story be an adventure story. In another round, you can require a romantic angle. I would love to hear some of the stories you guys came up with. Share in the comments below!  Although English has only 5 vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u), it has more than 9 actual vowel sounds. In this activity, your class is going to discuss the actual vowel sounds of English by hunting for these hidden vowels in groups of words. I have provided the necessary worksheets for this activity but you can come up with your own if you wish based on what I have provided. Objective(s) of activity: Pronouncing the words in a group of words which have the same vowel letter carefully, you need to group together words which have the same vowel sound. This activity imparts an appreciation for the fact that the same English letter can sound very different in different words. Directions: In the worksheet, you will see 5 groups of words, one group for each of the English vowel letters. Each group has 12 words. Under each group of words, there is an empty box for you to write in your groupings of words which have the same vowel sound. You can see what I mean in the worksheet provided, but I have produced the word for the letter ‘a’ here.  Notice that all the letter ‘a’s are enclosed in a small box to show that this is the letter that you have to pay attention to in this group of words.
When you first start doing this activity, it is important to point out that the letter ‘a’ does not sound the same in all of these words even though it is the same letter. Eg. CAR vs. CAT In order to make this activity fun, you should take turns saying these words aloud like a zombie. You should also slow down at the vowel sound. CAAAAAR - CAAAAAT Doing this will make the difference in the vowel sounds quite clear. Saying these words aloud and slowing down at the relevant vowel sound is important especially if the word has many syllables. Once your students have gotten the hang of what to do, you can then go through all the words together and group together words which have the same vowel sound. Once you are completed with words with the letter ‘a’, you can move on the ‘e’ and then so on. In the worksheet, I have suggested answers based on a Standard Singapore English accent. Your groupings may slightly vary. Notes for scaling up/ down difficulty: If you want an added challenge for your class, you can do this after all the groupings have been determined.
Have fun pretending to be zombies and let me know how this activity went in the comments!  The basic mechanics of the party game ‘Taboo’ can be adapted to review how coordinate markers such as ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’ and so on can be used.
This game should be played without the pressure of a time limit. Instead, the focus should be on learning about correct sentence structure and coordinate marker usage. Objective(s) of activity: The primary objective of this game is to describe a word on a card to team mates without using the word itself. The teammates then have to guess what the word is. However, the describer is restricted with respect to how many sentences he or she can use. Directions: If you are using the Taboo cards, you probably have to screen them beforehand for difficulty and appropriateness. If you do not have the game, you can still do this activity. All you will need are square pieces of paper which have the words written on them. Form at least two teams. More teams are possible if the class is big. Once you have formed teams, you will choose one person from one team to be the describer. This person will take a card and then have to describe the word that is on that card without using the word itself. However, unlike the original game, you have to introduce restrictions on the number of sentences that can be used in the description. You should start with a two-sentence requirement. Suppose the word on the card is ‘Hammer’. This is a relatively simple word that can be described in one sentence: ‘I use this to knock nails into wood.’ However, in this adaptation, a two-sentence requirement means that the student must come up with two ways to describe a hammer. Eg. ‘I use this to put nails into wood.’ ‘You can find this object in toolboxes.’ The team gets a point only if the word is guessed correctly after the sentence requirement is met. Full, grammatical sentences have to be formed in their description. Once the teams are comfortable with this version of the game, you can introduce the next variant where the sentences that are formed must be connected together using appropriate coordinate markers, ‘and’, ‘but, ‘or’. Thus, if the word is ‘Hammer’, the description might look something like this. Eg. ‘I use this to put nails into wood AND you can find this object in toolboxes.’ The coordinate marker ‘AND’ is quite simple to use which means that the guesser will default to this marker. This is why you should alternate between coordinate markers. Thus, you can specify that you want ‘but’ to be used. If so, a description of a hammer may look like this: Eg. ‘I can use this to put nails into wood BUT you cannot use this to put nails into metal.’ When the team has guessed correctly, you can move on to the other team. Teams take turns with a different describer every time and the game ends after a predetermined number of rounds. Since coming up with the appropriate descriptions are not as straightforward as in the original game, you can give more time per round, say two minutes for each describer. Notes for scaling up/ down difficulty: One way to scale up this activity is to require more sentences in the description. So instead of just two sentences, you can impose a three-sentence restriction with the coordinate marker restrictions. In this version, you can make forming the description really challenging by requiring certain numbers of each coordinate markers. Eg. 2 ‘but’s or 1 ‘and’ and 1 ‘but’ etc. Alternatively, since ‘but’ is harder to use in these descriptions, you can award more points for descriptions that use ‘but’ rather than ‘and’. Eg. every description using at least 1 ‘but’ can get 3 points but using ‘and’ only gets 1 point. This will incentivize the use of the harder coordinate marker. It is possible to do this activity with a collaborative element while still maintaining the competitive aspect. What you can do is form two teams and show both teams the word on the card. In this version, the first team that works among themselves to come up with the right description using the required number of sentences and coordinate markers will get the point. The advantage of this version is that it does not put a single student on the spot by making her wholly responsible for the clue generation. Let me know in the comments how this version went in your class!  A little randomness can go a long way of introducing a fun element into a relatively mundane task.
In this activity, your class will be generating sentences with a set number of words which is determined by dice rolls. This activity is also a great opportunity to teach your class the difference grammar words (like a, the, and, of) and meaning words (like dog, building, walk, pretty). Objective(s) of activity: The objective of this lesson is to be the first one to write out sentences with various restrictions, such as number of words, and starting letter of words etc. Directions The students in your class have to write various sentences down. However, the number of words that the sentence has is determined by dice rolls. Bring two dice to class and roll it. You can use online number generators as well. Suppose the numbers are four and three for a total of seven. This means that the class has to come up with a sentence that has seven words. The first student to write it down and offer it to you gets a point Eg. I want to go to the market. Although this is a simple activity, this activity can be used to teach your class about different types of sentences and even about the differences between grammar and meaning words. Suppose you use just one dice and roll a 1. There is really only one type of sentence that can be formed in English that has one word. This type of sentence is called an imperative, otherwise known as commands. Eg. Come! Sit! At least in English, you need at least two words to form a declarative, which forms the main types of sentence type. The following has an intransitive verb. Eg. John slept. The third major sentence type is an interrogative or simply a question, which can either be yes-no questions or wh-questions. Eg. Is the soup hot? Yes-No question What did John eat? Wh-question As should be clear, a yes-no question is one which asks for a yes, or no, response, while a wh-question is a question with who, what, where, when, why and how. You can bring variety to the exercise by asking your class to not only form a sentence with the required number of words but also require the sentence to be of a particular type (i.e, command, declarative or question). Another lesson you can impart from this lesson is the difference between grammar and meaning words. In most sentences of English, you can find words that carry the main meaning and words that serve a grammatical function. Eg. John is walking to the store. In this sentence, ‘John’, ‘walking’ and ‘store’ are meaning words whereas ‘is’ ‘to’ and ‘the’ are grammar words. If you want to teach the difference between these two types of words, you can restrict the word limit to just meaning words. Suppose you roll 3 on the dice with this restriction only applying to meaning words. This would mean that the sentence ‘John is walking to the store’ is a possible option because there are only three meaning words in the sentence. Notes for scaling up difficulty: One way to make this task more challenging is to also randomly select the actual letters that must be included in the sentence. Suppose you roll 4 on the die. In this variant, not only must the sentence contain only four words, each word must also start with a pre-chosen letter. This choice happens after the die has been rolled and must be random and can be repeated. Eg. Die shows 4. One student chooses the letters A, D, U, H A sentence that satisfies the rules of the activity: ‘A horse dived under’. Let me know in the comments how your students liked this activity!  The parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc) are simple concepts but students often struggle with identifying them.
This exercise uses the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Caroll to practice these concepts and equip your students with tools that they can use to identify parts of speech accurately. Objective(s) of activity: The main objective of this activity is to practice identifying the parts of speech of words by focusing on a humourous poem. Directions: You can easily find the Jabberwocky poem online through a simple Google search. I have included the first stanza with certain key words highlighted. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. The first thing to do is to get a student (or your whole class) to read the stanza. They should especially find the bolded words strange, especially if they have a reasonable vocabulary. The second part of the task is to replace the bolded words with any other English word that they think can fit in the same place. The following is an example of what they might come up with. ‘Twas bright, and the slippery snakes Did jump and dive in the water: All afraid were the animals, And the evil witches chanted. As you can see, once the words have been replaced with much more familiar ones, the meaning of the stanza is much less obscure. The important task now is to ask your class why they decided to substitute certain words in each position. For example, why did they choose ‘bright’ as the first word? Could it have been ‘dark’ instead? How about ‘cold’? You should use this simplified rubric to carry out the rest of the activity: Adjective = quality Verb = action Noun = object Based on this understanding, we can see that the first bolded position is one in which any adjective (quality) can be freely substituted. However, nouns (objects) and verbs (actions) do not really fit here. The following examples sound really bad. Eg. ‘Twas horse, and the… ‘Twas kick, and the … In the rest of the stanza, you can then ask your class, whether you would substitute a quality, object or an action in place of each bolded word. The following shows the word class for selected words in the whole poem. Twas brillig (Adj), and the slithy (Adj) toves (N) Did gyre (V) and gimble (V) in the wabe (N): All mimsy (Adj) were the borogoves (N), And the mome (Adj) raths (N) outgrabe (V). "Beware the Jabberwock (N), my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious (Adj) Bandersnatch (N)!" He took his vorpal (Adj) sword in hand: Long time the manxome (Adj) foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish (Adj) thought he stood, The Jabberwock (N), with eyes of flame, Came whiffling (V) through the tulgey (Adj) wood, And burbled (V) as it came One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal (Adj) blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing (V) back. “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock (N)? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous (Adj) day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. Twas brillig (Adj), and the slithy (Adj) toves (N) Did gyre (V) and gimble (V) in the wabe (N): All mimsy (Adj) were the borogoves (N), And the mome (Adj) raths (N) outgrabe (V). Notes for scaling up difficulty: Apart from the substitution task, there are other ways in which you can determine what the word class/ meaning-type of a word should be. You can tell the word class of a word by seeing what types of meanings they can combine with. Adjectives can be modified by adding the comparatives ‘more’/ ‘most’/ ‘-er’ Eg. tall, taller beautiful, more/ most beautiful Nouns and verbs cannot be modified in this way. Thus, the following are very strange. Ball, more ball. Kick, more kick For nouns, you can make them plural. Eg. Boy, boys Desk, desks Verbs and adjectives cannot be pluralized. Say, says (does not mean more than one ‘say’) Tall, talls Verbs can be made into past tense. Eg. Walk, walked Kick, kicked Nouns and adjectives cannot have past tense Tall, talled Ball, balled You can then ask your class to make up sentences with nonsense words which can be classified as either nouns, verbs or adjectives according to the rubric above. How did you class like this poem? What kind of sentences did they come up with? Let me know in the comments!  Use the classroom as a treasure hunting ground.
In this game, students will be listing as many things as possible that start with a certain letter. However, students have to be a little more flexible in how they describe the objects. Objective(s) of activity Take turns spotting objects that start with a certain letter chosen by one of the players. When a person is unable to spot an object satisfying this requirement during their turn, start with a new letter. Directions All the players first look around the place to get an idea of the objects in the classroom. If your students like this game and you are bored of the classroom, you can turn this into a nice outdoor activity as well. One player starts by choosing a letter, for example ‘p’. The other player then has to come up with an object in the room that starts with that letter. Suppose there is an image of a pear in the room. So, the next player can point to this and say ‘pear’ (or picture). So far, this is like ‘I Spy’, but in this game, you can use the properties of the object as part of the name. Thus, the following would be valid responses. Eg. Pear Purple elephant Plane Pink tongue The first two objects clearly start with ‘p’ and are acceptable. However, you are also allowed to offer responses such as ‘Purple elephant’ and ‘Pink tongue’. Even though ‘elephant’ and ‘tongue’ do not start with ‘p’, using their properties (in this case colour) allows you to use these as responses. The only requirements are that these objects are in the room and these objects really do have these properties. Apart from colour, you can also use the size of objects to describe them, for objects that start with ‘t’. Eg. Tall man (perhaps pointing to yourself) Thin girl Thick book Tiny ant Other physical properties like shape, state, number and taste can also be invoked in your responses. Eg. Triangular paper (shape) Torn paper (state) Two apples (number) Tasty soup (Taste) You can also be more abstract in your descriptions by using actions. Eg. Touch (said during an act of touching) Twist (said while doing the twist) In these examples, we are going beyond physical properties. In these examples, we are using physical actions. As long as the action is carried out, it can be used as a response in this game. Modifications of verbs can also be employed. The following shows possible responses to the letter ‘s’. Eg. Slowly walk (said while walking slowly) Sadly cry (said while pretending to cry sadly) Because the students are going beyond just the names of the objects, this is a great opportunity for students to increase their vocabulary of modification, eg. Adjectives, and adverbs. The game can thus be used as a segue way into a formal lesson on these parts of English grammar. Comment and let me know how your students enjoyed the game!  Form a sequence of chained sentences by using the last word of a previous sentence as the first word of the next sentence.
You can use this activity to show that not every word that ends an English sentence can start one. This is a great ice-breaker game or even something that can be used at the beginning of every class as a warm up. Objective(s) of activity: Take turns to form sentences. However, there are two rules: One, the last word in the previous sentence must be used as the first word in the next sentence. Two, the new sentence must be longer than the previous sentence. You can involve the whole class in this activity one student at a time. Directions: Start with a simple sentence with a subject verb and an object. Eg. ‘John saw Mary.’ Now it is the next person’s turn to form a sentence. But you have to use the last word of the previous sentence and the sentence must be longer. This shows a possible sequence of turns. A: ‘Mary kicked those balls. B: ‘Balls are fun to play with.’ C: ‘With a key, John opened the door.’ Now notice that the next person, D, is going to find it difficult to form a sentence. This is because just the word ‘Door’ cannot be used to start English sentences You can thus relax the rules a little to allow modifications of the last word. In this example, the type of modification you can add is a determiner like ‘the’ or you can make it a plural. Eg. The door or Doors These are much easier to start English sentences with. The same type of problem arises in the following sequence. A: John slept B: ?? It is not possible to form English sentences with ‘Slept’. Thus you can allow ‘Slept’ to be changed as well. One way to change it is to ‘Sleeping Now B can respond with something like: ‘Sleeping in is fun’. Notes for scaling up/ down difficulty: This game is challenging as is and does not require much more ramping up. However, if you are playing this game with less proficient ESL students, they may struggle with coming up sentences. In this case, you can remove the second rule of requiring that subsequent sentences be longer. However, you have to be careful not to fall into a stalemate like this exchange. A: John saw Mary. B: Mary saw John. C: John liked Mary. D: Mary kissed John. How long a sentence did you come up with? Share your longest sequence of sentences in the comments.  Building up one's vocabulary requires a lot of memory work. In this game, your students will use the idea of word collocations to build up their English vocabulary.
Objective(s) of activity: The main objective is to see how many related words your students can form using a base word. Pairs of students will take turns forming related words and the winner is the one who can form one more word than the other person. Directions: The game is simple. The first step is to choose a word, say a verb like ‘kick’. The other person then has to come up with another word which uses the word ‘kick’ as its core meaning. The following shows some members of the ‘kick’ word family. Eg. Kick – Kicks – Kicker – Kickers – Kick a ball – Kick the bucket – Overhead kick The first three (kick, kicker, kickers) are part of the same family because they just have affixes (or more specifically, suffixes) added to the root word ‘kick’. The other three can also be considered to be part of the ‘kick’ word family because these are collocations, whole words that occur commonly with ‘kick’. For the purpose of this game, you can consider these both types as collocations of the word ‘kick’. You should discuss the ‘kick’ example to illustrate how the game is played. Some other examples of collocations using sample words: Child – children – child seat – childish – childlike – child free - child menu Destroy – destroyer – destroys – Destruction – destroyed – wanton destruction Lock – locks – locked – unlock – unlocks – unlocked – lockable – unlockable Ball – balls – basketball – soccer ball – netball – volleyball – pinball Game – games – gamer – gaming – video game – game of thrones – game boy Phone – phone call – telephone – phones – phone home – smart phone Happy – unhappy – happier – happy camper – happiness – unhappiness - happily Sell – sells – selling – sellable – salability – unsellable – sold – sold out Notes for scaling up difficulty: You can make this game more challenging for advanced students in the following ways: i) Ban certain affixes: One of the most common affixes that can go on a noun is the plural affix. Eg. cat – cats, dog – dogs, teacher – teachers Likewise the most common affix with verbs is the past tense, which can also be banned. Eg. walk - walked, kick – kicked, jump - jumped Ban the use of the plural or past tense family member for nouns and verbs respectively can make the game more challenging. ii) Require more than one word at a time: Instead of offering one word at a time, you can require two words at a time. This means that the easier answers run out faster and it is harder to come up with more family members. iii) You can even choose to ban all affixes. Thus, for the ‘kick’ example the first four responses shown are not permitted. This forces students to generate concepts that are often found with the verb ‘kick’. What other words and collocations did your students come up with? Let me know in the comments.  This activity is an essential part of the ESL teacher’s toolkit. Improvisation and role play are great ways to get ESL learners to practice English in a semi-naturalistic setting. Vary the settings and number of participants for optimal immersion.
Objective(s) of activity: The primary objective is to immerse your ESL students into naturalistic settings that they are familiar with so that they can practice using the nuances of the English language. Specific directions and notes: 1) Be prepared before class and think of a number of scenarios beforehand with the requisite number of people. Have different scenarios for different numbers of participants. Some possible scenarios involving two individuals are the following: a) An interaction between a superhero and the villain b) A retail interaction (eg. a fish monger and a customer) c) A parent and child d) Teacher and student e) Policeman and interrogated criminal 2) You have to make sure that there is an objective for each interaction that is known to all participants in the role play. Eg. the objective of a retail transaction is to successfully exchange the right amount of money for a certain produce/ service. 3) Intervene as little as possible, except to prompt students to stay on objective for that role play. 4) If students are stuck on certain phrases, allow the use of their native language. The aim (at least in the beginning) is to provide students an opportunity to practice code switching with ease. Of course, you do not want students to use their native languages predominantly. 5) Encourage your students to speak in full sentences. Do not worry about whether the sentences are grammatical. 6) You can make the activity more fun by using different voices for different characters. (eg. deeper voice for the villain) Notes for scaling up difficulty: As the students become more proficient, you can come up with scenarios involving more individuals. This will give your students more practice with turn taking, looking for discourse cues and so on. You can have individuals enter and leave the role play as well. For example, while two individuals are speaking, you can have a third individual interject with a delivery. You can build complexity to your scenarios this way. Share with me your scenarios and how your students did! |
ESL games and activities that you can carry out in your classrooms or use for self-improvement. ArchivesCategories |
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