Whether you're teaching your class of students their first words of English as a second language or want to reinforce what has already been learned, a popular method of keeping things fun while also getting students to practice English words and phrases is through a selection of activities. These might range from worksheets to games and debates.

Acting Out Activities
A simple game for teaching a subject---present tense--- that can be a little tricky, this game sees one student acting out an activity of his own devising in front of the assembled class. The activity should be reasonably easy to guess, for example, gardening or brushing his teeth. The first student to guess correctly what activity is being acted gets to go next, and so the game continues.

Hangman
A classic game like hangman can be useful for teaching the spelling of words. All you need is a black- or whiteboard and a word in mind that the students will have to guess. Divide up the class into two teams; each team takes turns trying to reveal the word by guessing the letters. On wrong guesses, draw more of the hanged man on the board. The team that guesses the word wins the game.

Role-Play Activities
Role-play activities can be varied. The basic idea is that students get to practice their grasp of the English language through conversations and situations that recreate everyday scenarios. For example, you can practice past tense language by pretending to be a private detective who is trying to help the student find something she has lost: the student will have an opportunity to use past tense English as she tries to describe where she last saw the item or person, and so on.

Picture Discussions
You can trigger an English-speaking debate by posing questions using a series of pictures, which you show to the class, encouraging them to give their thoughts and opinions in English. For example, show the class a picture of a street scene, full of people. From here, typical questions you could ask include, "What is each person doing?" and "What are those people saying to each other?" There are no right or wrong answers in many cases, as the child is simply using his imagination and the English words he's learned.

Drawing Activities
Again using pictures, divide the students into pairs, with one person in each pair given a picture of some form, for example, from a magazine. The other person has a pen and paper. The first person describes the scene in the picture and the other student draws what she's told; the pair then swap positions with a new picture. At the end, you can see how much each student can say about the picture and how much English they can accurately understand.