EFL Activities (1)

1. GRAMMAR CASINO

Grammar Casino is a game you can modify for each and every class, student level and grammar topic. First you divide the students into 5 groups. You assign one sentence to each group. Let’s say our topic is wh- questions with ‘do/does.’ You assign as following:

Group 1 = How – (+) (Affirmative)-she

Group 2 = What- (-) (negative)-they

Group 3= Which- (+) – he                           …… and it goes on like this.

Students are supposed to make questions. They are free to form any kind of sentence as long as they follow the components above. After this part is finished, you ask students to write their sentence on the board one by one.

1. How does she look like?


2. What don’t they understand?


3. Which car does he wash? …. It goes on one by one.

While students are engaged in these, you draw a chart on the board. Or you can prepare it in advance. The chart should be like the following:

After all above is finished, you tell students that each group gets 100 chips. Now they are going to bet on whether the sentences are grammatically correct(C) or incorrect (I). They should focus on sentence order, SVA, spelling etc. Meaning should not be the focus. Students can bet chips as they like. They can bet ‘All in’, 50 chips, 1 chip, 25 chips…. whatever they like. Now you give them 30 seconds to discuss within their groups. Since the first group formed the first sentence, they cannot bet on it. The table should look like this.

All students have to bet! There is no ‘pass’. After groups tell their bets, you ask them ‘Why do you think it’s incorrect? Or correct? Students have to justify their answers. While filling in the chart, you have to keep scores. If the group gets the bet right, they gain twice as much as they bet. If they don’t get the bet right, they lose what they bet. At the end, the group that has the most chips wins. I know it sounds complex and hard and you feel it would take a lot of time. But if you are prepared in advance, the whole game takes 20 minutes. I believe it is worth everything. You cannot believe how carefully they focus on grammar and see it as an important component of language. Enjoy! J

2. Alphabet Game

This game is practical for diagnosing, teaching or revising vocabulary items. First, you will write the whole alphabet on the board. Make two groups of students and tell them to get up and stand in a line. You will mark a line which students are not allowed to cross. Give them different colored board markers and call the group name accordingly. Let’s say ‘blue group’ and ‘red group’. You will give them a time and you can play an upbeat song in the background to motivate them. In the allocated time, students will write vocabulary items they know on the board next to the letters you wrote before one by one. They can write more than one word on the letters. The student who finishes writing his word will run and give the board marker to the other student waiting at the beginning of the line and quickly go back to the end of the line. The game will go on like this until the time is up. After that, the teacher will count the vocabulary items and decide which group wins. If there is a spelling mistake or unrelated vocabulary item, it will not be counted.

3. Hang Man

Hang man is one of the cult games of all times. This is a great practice for both vocabulary and spelling. You draw a few lines according to the vocabulary item you will ask and the students try to find that item by telling the letters in it. You can hang man on the board each time they say the wrong letter. This is enjoyable even with adult learners.

4. Pizza Massage

The last minutes of the last lesson of the day, both you and your students are exhausted. In such situations you can use the pizza massage activity. All of the students will be in pairs and one will be doing massages to do the other one while you are telling a story. For example; (to revise past cont.) ‘Last night, I was graving for some pizza. So I left home and took my motorcycle. It was raining. I entered Dominos and one of the cooks was kneading dough. One of them was slicing the bread. I got the pizza. I got on my motorcycle again. I went back home. It was still raining.’ You can add more sentences to this story. While telling the story, you show some massage movements. For instance, ‘kneading dough’ is the massage you do to shoulders, ‘raining’ is the tapping movement to the forehead, and ‘slicing the bread’ is the massage you do with your hands open, vertical and tapping to the back of the person. It sounds a little bit odd, I know, but students enjoy it and they get relaxed. Also you can do some Yoga or physical-fitness exercises in the morning to make students a little energized.

(To be continued)

Ayşe Merve Kurtulan / FLE 2014