Most of these activities involve a high level of student participation, via giving short oral presentations to the class. Many of them are oriented towards teaching business English.
Games: basketball | telephone | story telephone | "If I..."
Rhymes, songs, and clapping games
Telling a Story: creative group activity
Conducting a Survey: asking/understanding questions, diagrammatic skills
Onomatopoeia: capturing the sound of a language
English name origin assignment: individual internet research, oral skills
Spaceballs: movie activity to teach advertising
Understanding the news: group newspaper activity
Comics: individual and group activities
the Basketball game: team activity
This works great for miscreant jock classes.
1. Break the class into two teams. They can come up with team names, which are written on the board.
2. A trash can is emptied, and a shooting range is decided.
3. Each team takes turns answering questions. One student is chosen from each team (for each question). If the student answers the question right, they get a point. The student can then try to make a shot in the trash can. If they make it, they get another point.
4. A time limit can be set for answering the question. If a team answers wrong or runs out of time, it defaults to the next team.
Telling a Story: group activity
1. The teacher should bring in magazine pictures, enough for each group of 3-5 students to have a handful of images.
2. Students use the photos to create a story. They can write down some notes or make a flowchart to remind them of important details, but they should not write out the story in complete sentences.
3. Students should practice telling the story within the group.
4. Students play rock, paper, scissors to choose a "storyteller." The storyteller then moves to the next group, with the photos and outline, and tells the story to the new group. The new group should listen and write down an outline of the new story. Students should practice reading the new story they have just heard.
5. In each group, all but the old storyteller play rock, paper, scissors to choose a new storyteller. This student moves to the next group with their new images and outline.
6. This can be continued as long as students are interested. You can discuss the changes to the story over time as a class, if time permits.
Conducting a Survey: group or individual activity.
Vocabulary: conduct | anonymous
1. In preparation, the teacher can conduct an anonymous survey with the students in a previous class. Several questions can be written on the board and students should write down their answers, fold the paper, and turn it in. Names should not be collected if the survey is intended to be anonymous. The teacher can compile the results and make a diagram to demonstrate to the class.
2. In groups or as indiviuals, students should think of at least one question per person, or two questions per group. Students should be introduced to the idea of a leading question (a question that implies a certain answer based on the wording), and should be encouraged to think about their body language.
3. Students then circulate and ask 75% of the class their question and record their answers. This should be done orally. The teacher can remind the students that while conducting a survey, the more people they ask the more correct their conclusions will be.
4. Students then make a chart, graph, or table of students responses. This chart can be drawn on the board and each student or group can then present their information to the class.
See some of the student's results, or the results of the example survey I gave them as an introduction.
Onomatopoeia: class activity
1. Students can look up or teacher provides explanations of some/all of the following words: onomatopoeia | abstract | create (creative) | invent (inventive) | pretend | sonic
2. Teacher introduces the idea of listening to a language as a sonic experience, spoken language being a way of communicating using sounds. Each language has it's own set of sounds not limited to letters in the alphabet. The teacher can discuss stereotypical impressions of different languages. For example: the rapid rolling of r's in spanish, or the guttural and mixed vowels of German.
3. Make a chart on the board similar to this:
| animal sounds | English | (native language of students) |
| dog | woof, bark, howl | |
| cat | meow, purr | |
| cow | moo | |
| duck | quack | |
| frog | ribbit |
4. Fill up the columns of English words as you have students fill in the companion words in their native tongue. You can make a similar chart for more abstract words, or non-animal noises (footsteps, punching, laughing, crying)...
5. Discuss the differences in common sounds between the two languages. Make a list on the board. Remind the students that the original sound (a cat meowing) is the same from country to country: the difference is the way people hear.
6. Students then create nonsense words out of the individual sounds and practice saying them. Then students act out a simple situation in pairs using only these sounds, or invented words. (Example: Sue bought a new dress. Her friend Mandy thinks it is ugly.) Alternatively, students can use real English words with the troublesome sounds, repeated over and over again.
Student 1: "Carl. Carl-carl-carl-carl. Carl! Carl-carl-carl!"
Student 2: "Mouth, mouth mouth? Mouth?"
Comics: general activity
You should have: several pages of the comics in English, and a photo copy of one comic for each student with the words blocked out.
1. Students first read several of the comics. Look up words they do not know or ask the teacher for help with slang, idioms, etc.
2. Discuss which comics are the funniest. What makes them the best?
3. Students fill in the word bubbles of the photocopied comics, or draw their own strip.
Examples:
the elder brother | blandishments | the sexy bath | the mouse | the old wife | He's gay! | the Ex | the divorce
SUGGESTED RESOURCES:
phD comics | comics.com
You'll need to print out different news articles of a level suitable to your students.
1. Students break into groups of 2-4.
2. Each group is given a different article. Students should read the article together and discuss, to ensure that every member of the group understands the article.
3. Students should copy down and look up 10 new words from the article.
4. Students should copy down 10 words that are hard to pronounce. The teacher can make rounds and teach each group how to pronounce these words.
5. Take notes: what is the main idea? What are three other important ideas in the article?
6. Make a list of statistics/numerical information. If possible, make a chart, graph, table, or timeline from the information.
7. Present to class.
My University students took about two hours of classtime to complete this with 2-3 page articles from the BBC and New York Times.
Discussion questions: discuss as a class or within each group.
1. Is it important to read the news and know what is happening in the world? Why or why not?
2. Is the press always correct? Are some sources better than others?
3. What news topics are you the most interested in?
1. Students use the internet to look up the origin and meaning of their English name, or choose a name.
Example for students: My name is Jessica. William Shakespeare invented my name for the play Merchant of Venice. It was taken from a minor character in the bible, called Iscah. It's origin is Hebrew. It means "God beholds."
2. Find out how popular their name is in the US.
Example for students: The name Jessica was ranked #1 in the 1980's and 90's. It was ranked #21 in 2004. It is becoming less popular.
My name is/isn't very popular.
My name was popular in the 1920's.
In 1940 my name was ranked number 70.
3. Each student presents the information to the class.
Example for Students: "My name is Jessica. Jessica is a Hebrew name that means "God beholds." It was the most popular name in the 1980's and 90's."
SUGGESTED RESOURCES:
Name Voyager: http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html
students type in name and select boy or girl. A bar chart will appear showing the general trends of name popularity. Holding the mouse over the chart will show specific rank during the decade.
www.behindthename.com: there are many resources available for finding the origin and meaning of one's name.
VOCABULARY: rank | origin | popularity