As the demand for English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers and programs increases both in the United States and abroad, resources to help teach and reinforce grammatical concepts become more and more valuable. ESL teachers can make learning fun for their students by incorporating educational games into their curricula. While some ESL games target grammar, whereas others work better for vocabulary, any such game can provide a break in an ordinary school day while helping students grasp some valuable tents of the English language.

Rainbow Tag
Line the students up and assign each student a vocabulary word. (Follow a common theme with the words, such as different colors or fruits, and assign each word to multiple students.) Choose one student to stand facing the rest of the students and call out a word. All the students with that word must run across the field/yard/gym without the person in the middle catching them. Those who are caught join the catcher and help catch others when a student calls the next word. The person in the middle can also call "rainbow" or "fruit salad" or some variation of the vocabulary theme, which means all the students run at once. This game provides a great way to reinforce vocabulary, according to a particular theme, such as colors or fruits.

What Time is it, Mr. Wolf?
This game provides a great way to teach time---both how to ask for the time and how to tell it. Set the game up similarly to rainbow tag, but this time all students line up against a wall or in a line with one student standing apart, facing AWAY FROM the rest. She is the "wolf." The group of students call in unison, "What time is it, Mr. Wolf?" The wolf should then reply with a time: "It's one o'clock," or "It's eleven o'clock," etc. The students then take the corresponding number of steps toward the wolf. After a few rounds, the wolf can replace the time-telling response with a quick about-face, yelling, "IT'S LUNCHTIME!" The wolf then tries to tag as many students as possible, who then join her in the next round until she has caught all the students.

ESL Kickball/Baseball
Kickball or baseball can become a great review game for any kind of concept you want to work on. Kickball requires fewer materials, but your class can easily play baseball using crumpled-up paper as a ball.

First, create lots questions for the students to practice, then list them individually on slips of paper. Rank the questions in terms of difficulty, allowing for singles, doubles, triples and home runs. Allow teams to give themselves creative team names, which reinforces conversation and team geniality. Review the basic rules of kickball/baseball with your class.

The first team gets to "pitch" a question to the batter of the second team. If the batter gets the question right, the pitcher then pitches an actual ball. The batter has a chance to kick/hit it. If he hits it, he runs to first base. If the batter gets the question wrong or answers the question correctly but misses the ball, he "strikes out."

By playing in teams, the competition increases as students strive to answer correctly and cheer on their teammates to do the same. Play continues until one team reaches a fixed number of runs, or until the questions run out.

To make this game more advanced, add variations, such as "fouls" or "balls" for answers that the batter answered closely but not exactly, for questions that the pitcher did not ask with good pronunciation, etc.

Market Day
Market Day provides another fun way to teach and reinforce conversational phrases, although it does require some prep work. Set up various booths such as a store, post office, food stand, etc. Give your students fake money at the beginning of the game, then have them use it use it to make their rounds of the marketplace. Your students will need to learn to use phrases before they receive any goods or services---that is, they cannot purchase postcards at the post office, hot dogs at the food stand or pencil cases at the store unless they ask key questions such as "how much does it cost?" etc.

Although not as competitive as some of the others, this game can incorporate time limits, teams/partners or the inclusion of stations with games and tasks that participants need to complete.

To foster foster more healthy competition in this game, you can give each of your students a "passport." When the students receive money at the beginning of the game, they can also receive a passport, which they should ask to have stamped during their participation at each station in the market. Players with the most stamps in their books or players who make a complete circuit the fastest could receive extra points or prizes.