An ESL teacher always needs to get his students speaking and listening to English. As we all know, our students many times don’t hear English outside of class. Many immigrants work and live with people who don’t speak English. Classroom activities that challenge a student’s listening and speaking skills are essential. You need to find activities that are fun and not intimidating so even the shy and reserved students will get on board. Try the following activity to get your students interacting and practicing English with one another.

At the end of a unit or chapter think of the major vocabulary words and grammar concepts that you want your class to practice. On a piece of paper draw nine line horizontally so you have ten equal sections to use. Write out ten sentences, one for each section, that include target vocabulary and grammar. Every sentence should cover a different set of words and grammatical concept. Cut out each sentence so you have ten slips of paper. Each slip of paper will have a unique sentence on it. Have your students sit in rows of five to six people back. You can decide how many rows there are going to be and how many students in each row by looking at your class numbers. This activity will work with large and small classes.

Now, explain to the class that the first person in every row will be getting a slip of paper that contains a sentence in English on it. This person’s job is to read the sentence and turn the paper face down. He now turns around and whispers the sentence to the student behind him. This student listens and immediately turns to the next student and does the same thing. Once the last student has heard the sentence, he is to say it out loud to the rest of the row and to you. As the teacher, you will tell him if he is correct or not. Many times the sentence that the last student recites is very different from the original. That is OK. Write the original sentence on the board so students can see what it was supposed to be. Go over the words that were mispronounced or omitted. Remind student that in the lesson you went over the grammar that the specific sentence includes.

If you have a larger class you will have to move around the room to attend to each group. When one row is done with a particular sentence, give it to another row. Let your students have fun and get carried away. Most people can’t help but laugh at themselves during this activity. Even though everyone is having fun, and most likely getting a little loud, there is important English practice occurring. Each student will concentrate extra hard on pronouncing their sentence correctly and listening to their classmate’s English. Many students will only produce English if they are forced to, and this is a fun way to require participation. I’ve always had fun with this and I bet you and your class will too.

Andrew Lawton
http://drewseslfluencylessons.com