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Word String

The traditional way of studying and repeating words is not an interesting thing. Students have to force themselves and their memory. Play the game 'word string' to make this process funny, competitive and easy.

1. Start the game by saying the word 'string'.
2. Students in turn say words which begin with the last letter of the previous words, but no word may be repeated. For example: ''tring - good - doctor - run - nice - every'
3. If this is too easy, ask the students to use the last two letters of each word. For example: 'reat - attention - onto - topic - ice - century'

Change The Word

We know more than we think, because our long memory contains more information than the short one. If not motivated it is difficult for us to remember things stored somewhere deep in our memory. Your students will do their best to remember all their vocabulary if it helps their team to win.

1. Divide the class into teams of about 5-6 students.
2. Write a four-letter word on the board, for example 'TEAM'.
3. Each team, in turns, writes a new word underneath the previous one.
4. Each new word must change only one letter from the word which went before, and no repeats are allowed.
5. One sequence might be: 'team - beam - bear - beer - deer' - etc.
6. Any team unable to provide a suitable word loses points.
7. When no team can suggest a word, start again with a new beginning.
8. More advanced classes can be asked to produce words with five letters, although in this case they might need to change two letters of the word each time.

Find A Crib

When teaching 'yes/no' dialog construction, teachers ask students questions that require positive or negative answer. The students try to make a correct dialog construction, while dialog itself is not important for them. If the students were interested in positive or negative replies, they would learn the construction easier.

1. One student goes out of the class.
2. Teacher points to a student in the class.
3. He or she obtains a crib.
4. Then the first student comes in.
5. He has three attempts to ask any of the students for the crib. Ex.: Ann, do you have a crib? - No, I haven't.

Search Through The Book

One of the reading skills is scanning the page in search of information. It is widely used in Internet though it is not well trained when studying a language. Devote some time to developing scanning skill while doing text reading exercises.

1. Open your course book at random.
2. Read out a sentence or paragraph from the open page.
3. Ask the students to find the place and tell you the page number.

Your students will be able to read books much faster when it is needed to get the idea not going into details. In the future these skills will save their time spent on searching useful information in text.

Disappearing Text

Students should have a good memory to do well in studying. Learning by heart is a good way to train memory and maybe the most effective if not so boring. The 'disappearing text' game can help students achieve the same results while reading a text from the board.

1. Write a text on the board and ask one of the students to read it aloud
2. Erase a small part of the text, not more than one or two lines
3. Ask another student to read out the text on the board to the rest of the class including the missing words from memory
4. Erase one or two more words and ask the third student to read the text on the board including the missing words
5. Continue in this way until the whole text has been erased and remembered

To The Last Letter

Studying language starts with studying the alphabet. If the beginning is interesting there are much more chances the kids will like the whole process. Play the card game 'to the last letter' with your pupils instead of monotonous learning letters by heart.

1. Prepare as many cards with letters so that each of them will have at least five
2. Give out all the cards or just those letters that you are studying at the moment
3. Then call out a letter and those who have the card with this letter raise it as quickly as they can
4. The pupil who is first to raise the card, gives it to the teacher
5. The first pupil without any card left is the winner

You and your pupils will have fun studying alphabet. The game encourages the kids to learn the letters faster as the better they know the alphabet the more chances to win they have.

Sounds Around Us

Students can better comprehend the language they study when they listen attentively. However most listening-comprehension exercises develop words recognition skills rather than attention. Play the listening game to pay attention to the sounds they hear but are not aware of.

1. Ask students to sit still trying not to make any sounds
2. Ask them to close their eyes for one minute and listen to the sounds inside and outside the room
3. After one minute, ask them to open their eyes and write on the board: 'Did you hear?'
4. Students begin asking you, 'Did you hear the scream?' 'Did you hear the car crash?' etc.
5. Answer them with, 'Yes, I did!' or 'No, I didn't.'

You will teach your students to be good listeners. This will help them understand more of foreign speech in real life situation that is much different from a distinct voice on a record.

Clap Your hands

Majority listening-comprehension exercises are based on listening to tapes. It's like listening to a boring radio program: if students had a chance they would change the station or turn the sound off. Why not make it a little bit fun if you can't abandon the exercise?

1. Tell the student that you are going to play the tape.
2. Ask them to clap the hands when they hear definite word or expression.

Inserting Adjectives

We describe our feelings and attitude towards everything in life by using adjectives. The right adjective makes the speech more exact while the wrong one may result in misunderstanding. There is a game that demonstrates it better than anything else.

1. Find a story or other interesting text
2. Retype the text with blank spaces where students are to insert adjectives.
3. Ask students to volunteer ideas for descriptive adjectives that might fit the blank spaces.

Alternatively, ask students to supply adjectives without knowing what the context is or what they are describing. They enumerate some adjectives and you write them in. Then read out or display the result at the end.

Guessing The Epithet

Adjectives are often used as epithets in literary language. The more epithets a person knows the better language he or she speaks. We study adjectives in set phrases together with nouns, like 'a wooden table' or 'a square table', as if we don’t care how literary our language is.

1. Ask each student to write down a set of five or so adjective-noun phrases.
2. One of the students starts and tells the others only what the noun is.
3. They then have to guess the entire phrase. For example, if the student gives the noun table, the others might guess its epithet: A shabby table? A dirty table? An orange table?
4. He may need to give hints to facilitate guessing, tell them when they are getting 'warm', and so on.
5. The one who guesses the correct solution gets the next phrase to be guessed.

If you use 'Guessing The Epithet' idea you will not just teach the language, you will teach a good language. Your students will not just express themselves in a language, they will do it beautifully.