Games and activities

Obsessions

You need a group who are pretty comfortable with each other, like a competitive element and don't mind being silly. It works really well in getting students talking and moves the focus away from accuracy very nicely. Students at all levels can play it, though as with all fluency practice, it's not really for beginners. Here's how you set it up:

  1. Do a hangman of "obsessions" or write obsessions on the board with every other letter missing and see if they can guess what it is.
  2. Elicit the meaning of obsession, and then some of the things that people get obsessed with. Note these on the board.
  3. Ask them to imagine what happens if somebody with an obsession goes to a party? What would they talk about? [Hopefully they'll answer that they'll rattle on about their obsession].
  4. Tell them that they're going to a party, then put them in groups - 4 works best for this.
  5. Once in their groups tell them that they each have to choose something to be obsessed about - probably something from the board. Get them to check that no two people in each group have the same obsession.
  6. By now they should all be pretty excited about the activity. Tell them that they're going to spend 3 minutes at the party with their colleagues and it's a competition to see who can talk the most. There are rules though, as follows:
    • You can't talk over another person. Only one person can talk at once
    • You can interrupt another person, but only by talking about their obsession, which you must then try to turn to being about your obsession. The students will need an example of this to see what you mean. For example, my obsession is computers and you're talking about budgies, so I can interrupt by saying that I saw a really interesting budgie role-play game for PCs the other day. It's not available for Macs, but then Macs generally have a much smaller software base, which is a shame because the Mac operating system is better... and so on and so on. You get the idea. So will your students.
  7. At the end of the three minutes ask the students to decide who was the winner, i.e. who was successful in talking for longest about their obsession. Most groups are very fair at doing this. You can also ask what was the silliest thing anyone said etc.
  8. If it's going really well, and you have 3 or more winners, you can put them together in a "grand final" for the rest of the class to listen to and enjoy

What do you think of this activity? Have you tried it? Do you have any fluency activities that have worked well for you? Talk about it on the discussion board.

Change Chairs

Warning: This game can result in broken furniture and limbs if played with excessive zeal. Remind students as you play that it's not acceptable to shove other students or run into them!

You need quite a large room and not too big a class. It probably works best with about a dozen students. Any level from beginners up can play. Kids love it, so do some adults.

  1. Put the chairs in a circle. Make sure there is one less chair than there are students
  2. Everyone sits down apart from the person who hasn't got a chair. This person stands in the centre of the circle. I like to take this role myself to start off with.
  3. The person in the centre of the circle says "Change chairs if you're wearing black shoes", for example. Everyone with black shoes has to stand up and get into somebody's else's chair. While this is happening, the person in the middle tries to get sat down. It's chaos, but tremendous fun.
  4. Whoever is left standing at the end of the round remains in the middle and calls out "Change chairs if..." for the next round. And so on.

Points of Contact

This is a fun game to revise/practise low numbers. Works well with kids and adults of a certain disposition.

  1. Get your students standing in a horse-shoe or circle, whichever you prefer.
  2. Stand on one leg and ask the students: how many is that?. Most will answer "one" hopefully.
  3. Ask again, this time standing on both legs. The answer will come back "two".
  4. Now ask while squatting down and putting 3 fingers on the floor. Some students will say" "three", show them the three fingers and ask again. When they say "five" they've got the idea and you're nearly ready to play.
  5. Ask them to make three points of contact. I usually simply say, "do three" or something like that. Check that they all do it correctly. Do this a couple more times with different numbers until you feel like they're getting the idea.
  6. Time for some student to student interaction. First, in "open pairs": ask 1 student to say a number for a second student. Everyone watches to check that they do it right. Go round the group like this at random for a while.
  7. Pair up the students and let them play.

Acknowledgement: This game is taken from The Recipe Book (Pilgrims Longman Resource Books) by Seth Lindstromberg, which also suggests some interesting variations

Stop the bus

This is a great game which revises a three or four different vocabulary sets. Before you play, consider carefully which vocabulary sets your students know well enough to be able to name 12 or 13 items all beginning with different letters. Good categories are: food, clothes, animals, professions, verbs, countries, places in town (i.e. town hall, cinema, swimming pool, library etc.). Chosen your categories? OK, this is how I play the game:

  1. Put the students into groups of three ("buzz groups").
  2. Ask each team to choose a name for themselves, maybe suggest a few ideas to get them started: All Stars, The Sharks, Cosmos etc. This isn't necessary, but it's fun and if it goes really well, you may wish to retain the teams for other activities.
  3. Draw a table on the board with a different column for each vocabulary group you're revising, plus one other.
  4. As ever, do the first example together with the whole class to demonstrate the activity: write a letter in the first column and elicit a word for each column with that letter, thus:
  5. Now the fun begins. Tell them that you're going to write a letter at random on the board and the first group to write a word for each category and shout "Stop the bus!" wins the round. First team to win three rounds win the game outright. Any group that shouts out before they have written the words will have a point deducted.
  6. After each round, check spelling, pronunciation and meaning of whatever vocabulary comes up.

Notes: Requiring students to write the vocabulary before shouting out levels the playing field a little. Otherwise, students who are quick at this sort of thing will discover they can shout "stop the bus!" and think of the answers later. Most people can't do this kind of thing and give up. As ever, you're looking for maximum student involvement here.