LANGUAGE GAMES:

1.  First, select an appropriate text and make copies.  Second, make sure that all the students can have copies of the text.  Third, read out the text and deliberately change some of it.  The listeners should follow their copy of the text and immediately stop me when they notice one of the changes.

2.  Draw 15 pictures of objects.  The students should first familiarize themselves with the pictures on the cards.  Then mix all the pictures and lay them in a pile, face down.  Students take it in turns to try to predict the next picture.

3. Arrange the students in a circle.  Give one student a tight ball of paper.  He/She must speak out a sentence for other students to continue to form a story, and then throw it to anyone else in the circle.  The student catching the ball must say a sentence to continue the story before throwing the ball to someone else.

4. Each student comes up with ten questions about his/her own personality, interests and concerns and writes them down.  Then organize the class into pairs.  The students ask their partners the question they had written for themselves to answer.  Then they put the questions and compare the answers.

5. Display 15 objects on the table.  Tell the students that I am going to challenge their powers of observation and memory.  Give the students 10 seconds to look at the objects, then hide them.  Then ask them to tell me what they have written.  Finally, recover the objects and let the students compare their lists with the objects.

6. Prepare a sentence before the lesson.  Show the sentence to someone sitting at the front.  Let this student see the sentence for five seconds, then take it from him/her and keep it myself.  That first student must then write the sentence he/she remembers on a piece of paper and show it to his/her neighbor for five seconds.  The neighbor does the same until the message has gone round the class.  When I see that the message has reached the last person, ask him/her to read out what he/she has written down.  Then read out the message as it began.  Then ask all the students in turn to read out the message they passed on.  Meanwhile, let students make a detained analysis of these changes.

7. First, let a student look at a picture which the rest of the class cannot see.  The ones who cannot see must ask questions to find out what is in the picture.

8. One student mimes an adjective/an adverb/a job/a sequence of actions.  The others try to guess what he/she is miming.

9. Arrange the students in a circle and ask them to call out numbers according to a given formula.  The aim of this game is for the students to count round the class from 1 to 100 without saying a chosen number or a multiple of it.

10. First, randomly choose a student and ask him/her a question.  He/She must first reply and then is let to choose the next "victim."  Make sure that all the students in class have a chance to take part in this game.

-Submitted by Songyi Zheng

11. Use a game like Pictionary and have students choose to draw vocabulary words or even idioms if they are more advanced.

12. "Cloze passage" where students listen to a song and have to fill in the missing words on their sheet. This is a great way to help students experience a different culture.

13. To teach prepositions, it is best to have a student describe one object in the room and then continue to move that object for the next student to describe.

14. Tongue twisters

15. Take an interesting picture and have the students come up with adjectives, nouns and verbs to describe it. When the list is long enough, have each group write a story using as many of the words as possible. The group with the most words in their story wins.

-Submitted by Kristen Tamburro

16. Game show (e.g. "Jeopardy") and crossword puzzle formats.

17. The "ABC" game: students must come up with one noun for each letter of the alphabet (using the appropriate alphabet).

18. Play "Simon says" in the target language. "Simon says do ...." and students must respond.

19. Students formulate questions and pose them to other students for answers.

20. Students must each bring something to class. All items are put on a table. Each student must choose one item which is not his/hers and must then ask (in the target language), "Whose pen is this?" Student who owns it must respond, "It's mine." "Thank you" etc. in a sequence of questions/answers which use the target grammar and/or vocabulary.

21. A student is selected to look at an object which is hidden (from other students) in a paper bag. The selected student must describe the object until someone correctly guesses what it is.

22. Students are divided into groups. The instructor says a phrase or asks a question which one student from each group must write/respond to on the blackboard. Team members may "shout" out help to the one who is writing on the board. The first team to get the correct written response wins a point.

-Submitted by 602 seminar discussion participants, spring 1999