Lost your voice

This is like a role-play activity with no dialogue! It needs a little bit of

preparation time for you to write out the problem cards. You can imagine any
scenario where functional language would be used, such as at the train station,
in a restaurant or at the shops. Set the scene by telling the students where
they are.

For this example they are staying in a hotel. One member of the team
has lost their voice and has to communicate various problems to the
hotel receptionist so he/ she can get it fixed.
Ask one member of each team to be the mime artist and give them a
problem card with a problem on. You can vary the language level of the
problem depending on your students. It could be as simple as The TV
doesnt work or the window is broken or a bit more complex like, the
shower in my room doesnt have any hot water. This is what they must
communicate to the hotel receptionists through mime.

Their team members play the role of hotel receptionists and must guess
what the student is trying to say.

To make it more challenging and to revise functional language the

students should guess what is written on the card word for word to win a
point, e.g. Could you help me please? The key to my room doesnt open
the door.

Writing consequences

This is a fun activity to create a group story. Each student needs a blank sheet of paper and
a pen. If possible, sit in a circle shape to play. Each student adds one stage to the story then
folds the paper to cover the information and passes the paper to the student on the right. At
each stage, before folding and passing to the student on the right, give these instructions.

Write the name of a man. It can be a famous man or a man everyone in

the class knows. (Depending on the group, allow them to put the names
of class mates)
Write the name of a woman. It can be a famous woman or a woman
everyone in the class knows. (Depending on the group, allow them to put
the names of class mates)

Write the name of a place where the two people meet.

When they meet, he says something to her. What does he say? Students
write what he says to her.

She replies to the man. What does she say?

Whats the consequence of this encounter? What happens?

Whats the opinion of the whole story. What does the world say as a
comment?

The end result is a mixed up story that can often be amusing. Read yours as
an example of how you want the students to tell the story. Then invite
students one by one to unfold their stories and read them to the group.
Depending on the level you can encourage use of connectors, reported
speech etc.
Games for question practice

Introduction
An essential skill in communicating and keeping up a conversation is the ability to ask
questions. Students sometimes get lots of chances to answer questions but here is how you
can get them to make some questions themselves! These activities can be used with a whole
range of levels.
1. FAQ's challenge
Tell students that they are preparing information on a topic for a booklet or a website e.g.
tourist information for their town, information about their school system, information about
customs or music in their country.

Students in groups or pairs brainstorm a list of six to eight frequently

asked questions on the subject.
The whole class pool their questions and discuss them.

Students prepare the answers in the next lesson.

2. Quiz question challenge

A quiz game based on recent vocabulary and topics covered can form the basis of this game
with a twist. It has been played successfully with beginners!

Read aloud the answers from your quiz cards

In teams students must guess what the question is! Allow conferring
between team members.

Award two points for getting the question exactly right and one point for
providing a question which makes sense and gets the answer, e.g. if the
answer is '21', the questions could be 'How many students are there in
this class? (two points) and 'How old is the assistant?' (one point)

3. Guess the object

Divide class into groups. Each group makes a list of three or four objects. Focus on words
recently studied, words for objects in the room or words for objects related to a topic e.g.
home, studying, music etc.

One group must guess the objects of another group by asking questions
e.g. 'Is it made of metal? Can you find one in this room? Is it bigger than
this table?'
Set a limit to the number of questions possible for each object (e.g. six
to eight questions). Give a point to the team if the object is not
guessed/guessed within the number of questions allowed.
Guide students by providing the lists of objects yourself or focussing on
specific question types to suit your classes.

4. Question time challenge

This approach can be used as a regular lesson slot or filler to change pace. Give one
question with the words jumbled up on slips of paper. The first pair or group to unscramble
it correctly are the winners.
A longer version: Take four or five question types recently covered by students. Jumble the
words of the questions and write on one worksheet or on slips of paper in an envelope.
Challenge small groups or pairs to re order. Run through the questions scoring two points
for each correctly ordered question. Then challenge students again to think of logical
answers to the questions or to use a couple of the questions in a mini dialogue.
Stop the Bus
Submitted by TE Editor on 21 October, 2009 - 08:25

This is a great game to revise vocabulary and you can use it with any age group and any
level by changing the category headings.
It really gets students focused and working on task as a team and can be a saviour to fill the
last ten minutes on a class when you have run out of ideas!
Procedure

Put the students into teams of three or four.

Draw on the board a table like the ones below and get each team to
copy it onto a piece of paper.

Students simply have to think of one item to go in each category

beginning with the set letter.

Give an example line of answers for the first time you play with a new
group.

The first team to finish shouts Stop the Bus! .

Check their answers and write them up on the board and if they are all
okay that team wins a point. If there are any mistakes in their words, let
the game continue for another few minutes.

If it gets too difficult with certain letters (and you cant think of one for
each category) reduce the amount of words they have to get. You can
say. Ok. For this round you can Stop the Bus with 4 columns.

Animals

Colours

Food

Clothes

Countries

Sports

Tiger

Turquoise

Tuna

Trousers

Tunisia

Tennis

For higher levels change the category headings. For example:

Something Something something
in the
in the living in the
Kitchen
room
bedroom
S Spices

Sofa

Sheet

something
in the
bathroom

something Something
in the
in the
Office
garden

Soap

Staples

Seat

Or, for even higher levels:

something
something
Something
made of
made of metal made of glass
plastic
B Bike

Bottle

Bin

something
something
made of
made of wood
material
Bench

Belt

Gap Fill Gamble

Submitted by Anonymous on 30 September, 2009 - 08:49
This is a game to make any gap-fill task or cloze texts (reading tasks with gaps) more
exciting. You need an envelope full of small bits of paper. Chop up a few pages of scrap
paper for this. Students compete against one another in pairs. Give each pair a bunch of
small bits of paper to keep on their table. Explain that they are going to compete against
their partner to win as many bits of paper as possible. Each one is worth one point. You are
going to read some sentences with gaps in. When theres a gap youll say beep. They must
write the beeped out word on a bit of paper without their partner seeing. Set a 5 second time

limit and then say, Okay, turn over. Both of the students turn over their papers at the same
time. If both are correct, leave them on the table to accumulate. If both are wrong, leave
them on the table to accumulate. When one student is right and the other wrong, the student
who is right wins all the accumulated cards that have gathered, and the piles start again on
the next question. This is great for practising prepositions, such as the time prepositions
in/on/at which students often make mistakes with.
For example:

My birthday is ____ beep November 22nd.

I have English class _____ beep Wednesdays and Fridays.

School starts _____ beep 8.30 am.

Im going to Cornwall ____ beep the holidays.

When you have done ten or so sentences, stop the game and get students to count how
many bits of paper they won. Rather than having just one or two winners in the class
after a game, the great thing about this one is that half the class win as each pair has a
winner.
(Thanks to Nicole Taylor for sharing this one in a training session a few years ago.)
I went to the shops
Submitted by Anonymous on 16 September, 2009 - 08:06
This is a classic memory game where each person adds a new item to the list in alphabetical
order. For example, student 1: I went to the shops and I bought an apple. Student 2: I
went to the shops and I bought an apple and a bike. Student 3: I went to the shops and I
bought an apple, a bike and a coat. This game can be adapted to different levels and lexical
sets. I recently revised sports and the use of do/ play/ go by playing I went to the sports
centre Its the same game, but using different vocabulary. For example, student 1: I
went to the sports centre and I did aerobics." Then I went to the sports centre and I did
aerobics and played basketball. and then I went to the sports centre and I did aerobics,
played basketball and went canoeing. etc.
The Press Conference
Submitted by TE Editor on 26 August, 2009 - 07:15

This is a longer activity that needs some preparation. Its great for practising question forms
in a fun way and gives structured speaking practice to lower levels. You will need a sticky
label for each student or a pack of Post-It notes.

Tell students that they have got the job of reporter for a magazine about famous people.
They are going to interview some famous people and they need to prepare some general
questions they can ask any famous person actors, singers, sports stars, politicians etc.
Give some examples, like, Do you enjoy your job? or Are you happy being so famous?
and get students to write four questions and put them into a table with the questions going
down the left hand side and space for five columns to the right. Then ask students which
famous person they would like to be and give each one a sticky label or a Post-It note for
them to write the name of the famous person on and stick on themselves.
Put students into two concentric circles with the inner circle facing out and outer circle
facing in. Tell students that they are going to interview the person directly in front of them
for two minutes and note down all the information they find out. They are also going to be
interviewed. The facing pairs take turns in the different roles of interviewer and famous
person. At two minute intervals shout stop and ask the outer circle to step one person to
the right. Shout start to give students two more minutes with a new famous person. When
each student has interviewed and been interviewed five or six times stop the activity and
seat students. The information they have gathered about the famous people can then be
shared with the group orally or used for a piece of writing for a gossip magazine. If you
have an odd number rotate one person out of the circle each time you move the other circle
around. This person can help you to monitor and can walk around the circle listening to the
others in action and making a note of any mistakes they hear. This activity gets very noisy
with a large group but it can be a great way to keep students speaking English for quite a
long period of time and you will probably see how their confidence grows as they get the
hang of asking and answering the questions.
Happy Graph
Submitted by TE Editor on 8 July, 2009 - 10:34

Although not really a game this is a valuable warmer activity for any teenage class. It
gives the students the chance to get to know you a little more and it gives you the
opportunity to find out about how your students are feeling before you start your lesson.
Draw the two axis of a graph on the board with 7 spaces along the bottom and three along
the vertical side with three circles. Ask students what they think the spaces are for and elicit
the days of the week for the horizontal axis (with today being the final one and working
backwards for a week) and put three faces in the circles, the top one very happy, the middle
one looking unimpressed and the bottom one looking sad. Tell students this is a Happy
Graph and then plot your own moods on the graph for the last week. Connect them up and
then tell students about your week and let them ask you some questions. For example,
Why were you really happy last Sunday? Because I went out with some friends for lunch
and we had a really good time. Then students do the same and ask each other questions in
pairs about their weeks.

Conditional chain game

Submitted by Jo Budden on 24 June, 2009 - 10:07

This game is good to revise and practise structures in the first conditional. The teacher
begins with a sentence, for example If I go out tonight, Ill go to the cinema. The next
person in the circle must use the end of the previous sentence to begin their own sentence.
Eg If I go to the cinema, Ill watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The next person
could say, If I watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ill eat lots of chocolate. Then,
If I eat lots of chocolate, Ill put on weight etc. etc.
One word stories

This activity is extremely simple. Each student adds a word to create a group story. Despite
the simplicity it can be really challenging and I would only use it with higher levels.

Students should be in a circle (if this isnt possible make it clear they
know who they are going to follow on from) The teacher can begin by
saying the first word and each student adds the next word, without
repeating what has come beforehand.
Good starting words are Suddenly or Yesterday to force the story into
the past tense. It is great for highlighting word collocations and
practising word order. It also highlights problems students may have with
tenses or prepositions for you to focus on in future classes.
The stories can develop in any number of ways. Some groups may need
the teacher to provide punctuation and decide that the sentence should
end and a new one should begin. The great thing about this activity is
that all students have to concentrate and listen carefully to their
colleagues to be able to continue the story coherently.

Example:

Teacher Yesterday
Student 1 I

Student 2 saw

Student 3 a

Student 4 strange

Student 5 man

Student 6 who

Student 7 was

Student 8 wearing

Student 9 a

Student 10 yellow

Student 11 hat

Teacher Full stop, new sentence

Student 12 He

Student 13 was

Etc. etc.

Name of ESL/EFL Game: Fly Swatter

Target Students: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
Duration: 20 minutes or more if students are into it enough
Number of Students: 10-30 or more
Skills: Listening, Word Recognition, Vocabulary
Objective: Hear the word and swat the corresponding picture on the
board
Instructions:

1. Write vocabulary words scattered across the board

2. Place two chairs in front of the board with a fly swatter on each chair
3. Divide class into two equal teams
4. Have one student from each team sit in the chairs with their backs to the board
5. Say one of the vocabulary words on the board
6. Students stand and find the word on the board
7. Students get one swat and the first student to hit the word with their fly swatter gets
one point for their team
8. If neither students hits the right word, the next students are up and no points are
awarded.
9. Repeat until everyone has had at least one turn.
Variations: Use pictures for young students who haven't learned the alphabet

Notes: This game can be used with any level student who needs to practice vocabulary and
is an exciting way to warm up the class. Students will often get loud so don't let teammates
shout the answer or location of the word.

Name of Game: Telephone

Target Students:
Young Learners
Elementary School
Middle School
High School
Duration: 5-30 minutes
Number of Students: Groups of 6 or more
English Skills:
Listening
Speaking
Writing
Objective:
Groups should pass a message to each member of their group by
whispering.
1. Divide class into groups of 6 or more, and arrange each group in a straight
line or row.
2. Ask for a volunteer listener from each group. Take them outside of the
classroom and give them a message (one sentence or more, depending on
student level).
3. Open the door, and let the students run to the first member of their group to
whisper the message.
4. Each member passes the message, by whispering, to their neighbor.
5. When the message reaches the end, the last person should run to the board
and write the message that they heard.
The winner could be determined in various ways: first team to pass a legible,
complete message (even if it's wrong), first team to finish, first team with a
message closest to the original.
- Ask the last student to repeat the message to YOU, and write it on the board
yourself. This is a good way to practice pronunciation, and to determine which
sounds students have trouble with.

This game could take up 5 minutes or 30, depending on how much time you have and how
interested the kids are. I've used it with high schoolers in Korea and they loved it. We spent
over half the class on this activity.
English Skills:
Spelling
English Skills:
Vocabulary
Objective:
Use the letters of a long word to spell smaller words
1. Make sure each team has a dictionary

2. Write a large word or phrase on the board

3. Give teams 10 minutes to come up with as many words as possible by using the
letters on the board
4. When time is up, one leader from each team will say the team's words
5. Each word is scored as follows:

1-letter words = 1 point

2-letter words = 3 points

3-letter words = 5 points

4-letter words = 8 points

5-letter words = 10 points

6-letter words = 12 points

7-letter words = 15 points

8 or more letter words = 20 points

Have each time submit words one at a time and write them on the board, with no
duplicate words allowed

Words that every team has are omitted and have no point value

Simply have teams hand in word sheets and tally scores

Use words/phrases with an 'e' and 'r' so students can make words that end in 'er'. Do the
same with 'ing', 'ly', 's' and other tails. You can have each team choose a 'secretary' to write
down the words and 'seekers' to look in the dictionaries.
Be sure to follow up this game by having students make sentences with some of the words
(5 seems to works well) and use the words in listening exercises in future classes.
Name of Game: Typhoon
Target Students:
Middle School
High School
Duration: 15-40 minutes
Number of Students: Groups of 3-6
English Skills:
Grammar

 Listening
Speaking
Writing
Objective:
Practice making sentences with game board grid
1. Draw a 6x6 bingo grid on the board
2. Randomly write points in the squares
3. In some squares, write 'Typhoon' instead of a number
4. Stick words cards on top of the squares and cover the number/typhoon
5. One team chooses a word card and must make a sentence with the word
6. If they make an incorrect sentence, move on to the next team
7. If they make a correct sentence, they get the number of points under the card
8. Typhoons allow you to erase all the points from another team
9. The team with the most points at the end wins

Play with 'Bankrupt' instead of 'Typhoon'

Use category cards instead of word cards

Make a minimum number of words for each sentence

Have students listen and repeat after correct sentences

Keep track of the sentences students make and use them for a follow-up activity.
Name of Game: The Hot Seat
Target Students:
Middle School
High School
University
Adults
Duration: 45 minutes
Number of Students:
Any
English Skills:
Listening
Speaking
Vocabulary

Objective:
Communicate words without saying them
1. Break class into 4 or less teams
2. Place a 'hot seat' in front of the class and facing away from the board
3. Each team selects a leader
4. One team is up at a time and their leader sits in the hot seat
5. Write ten words on the board so the leader can't see them
6. Number the words 1-10
7. Each team member is assigned a word or words on the board
8. Some team members may have more than one word
9. Team members take turns communicating their word to the leader without
saying the word with no spelling, writing, or drawing allowed
10. Team members can say 'pass' if their word is too difficult
11. Each team has 1 minute to get as many words as possible
12. The team with the most points at the end wins

Use simple words like animals or days of the week for weaker students

Use the word 'pass' as one of the words on the board to challenge strong students

This game can be challenging to explain so preparing directions in the student's native
language can be helpful.
Name of Game: Sentence Jumble
Target Students:
Elementary School
Middle School
Duration: 30-45 minutes
Number of Students: Any
English Skills:
Grammar
Reading
Speaking
Writing
Objective:
Review sentence structures and verb tenses

Preparation:
1. Make a series of sentences, three more than the number of teams in your class
2. Print the sentences in large text
3. Cut each sentence into separate words
4. Put each sentence into its separate envelopes
5. Number each envelope with a marker
Instructions:
1. Diving the class into pairs or small groups
2. Give each team one envelope
3. Students arrange the words into a correct sentence, copy it into their notebooks, and
put words back into envelope
4. When finished, students say the sentence, show their notebooks, and bring their
envelope to the teacher
5. If sentence is not correct, they go back and fix the error
6. If sentence is correct, they can swap their envelope for a new one with a different
sentence
7. The first team to unscramble all of the sentences is the winner

Use easy sentences for less advanced students

Use more complex sentences for more advanced students

This game is a sure success with any level or age group

Name of Game: Running Dictation
Target Students:
Elementary School
Middle School
High School
University
Adults
Duration: 15-30 minutes
Number of Students: Pairs or small groups
English Skills:
Listening

 Reading
Speaking
Writing
Objective:
Remember words and phrases and dictate them to your partner
1. Break students up into groups of 3-4, or pairs for small classes
2. Put one sentence on a piece of paper for each team
3. One leader from each team goes to the board and tries to remember their sentence
4. The leader returns to their group and dictates the sentence while team members
write it down
5. First team to finish correctly gets a point
6. Change words/sentences and switch leaders

Use pictures for children who can't spell and have them draw the picture instead of
writing the words

Use multiple sentences for more advanced students

Place
sentences around the room and have each group member do one each.

Groups have to put the sentences into the right order before turning in the paper

Make each team's paper different so students don't simply listen to other teams. Leaders are
not allowed to take their paper, write down anything, or yell across the room. They are
allowed to return to board to look at their paper as many times as they like. Use words from
class to reinforce learned vocabulary and grammar structures.
What are your variations? Leave comments on other variations below...