Category: ESL Games Adults

Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities for Teenagers and Adults

esl speaking activities adults

39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Speaking Activities: For Teenagers and Adults Sometimes even experienced ESL teachers get stuck in a rut. It’s time to find some fresh ideas!  Tired of Wasting Time Looking for ESL Speaking Activities? Whether you’re a first-time English teacher, an experienced but perhaps overwhelmed instructor with not much time for lesson planning, or an instructor without a textbook, you need more activities for your English conversion or speaking classes. If you’re tired of wading through the junk on the Internet to find the ESL speaking game or activity that you can actually use in your classes, then Jackie…

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Top 5 ESL Games for Teenagers | ESL Activities

ESL games for teenagers

Top 5 ESL Games for Teenagers Teaching English to teenagers can be quite difficult because they are notorious for not really wanting to participate in class. They are often shy, tired, and haven’t chosen to take your English class. However, help is here with these top five ESL games for teenagers that are guaranteed to get your teenage students participating in class, speaking English, and having fun despite themselves. Try out just a few of these ESL games for teenagers and you’ll notice that students like your class, like you, and will begin to like English more and more each…

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Vocabulary Games for ESL Students | ESL Vocabulary Activity

Vocabulary games for ESL students

  Teaching English vocabulary is traditionally quite boring for the students as well as the teacher. However, it doesn’t have to be tedious if you play a few vocabulary games for ESL students. They’re guaranteed to get your students talking, thinking and most important of all: remembering and knowing how to use those words they’ve been studying. Error Correction Relay Race: Correcting errors is a very important skill for language learners but it’s often quite boring and students usually don’t like to do it. However, you can make the old new again with this exciting relay race that the students will…

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Top 10 ESL Games | Fun ESL Activities

Top 10 ESL Games

You need some ESL teaching awesome in your life, right? Fun, engaging classes filled with happy students? Painless lesson planning that gets done in no time? Of course you do! Jackie is here to help you with these top 10 ESL games to try out in your own classes. Password: This is a fun ESL activity that gets your students practicing an important skill-using alternatives to describe a vocabulary word if it’s not available to them because they forgot it. It’s an often overlooked skill that is important for our students to use if they want to speak English fluently.…

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Fortunately/Unfortunately Speaking and Listening Activity

Speaking and listening activity

Skills: Speaking/listening Age: 9+ Materials Required: None You may have done this speaking and listening activity at school yourself. Start of by telling students some good news (something that “happened to you”) followed by some bad news. For example, “Unfortunately, my car wouldn’t start this morning. Fortunately, my neighbor gave me a ride to school. Unfortunately, she drove through a red light. Fortunately. . .” Students will then generate similar language using fortunately/unfortunately or luckily/unluckily. Procedure: 1. Divide students into small groups of 3-5. 2. Give them a scenario (something that “happened to you”), alternating between good and bad news.…

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Top 5 ESL Activities for Adults | ESL Games Adults

ESL speaking activities

ESL Activities for Adults If you’re looking for some ESL activities for adults, you’ve come to the right place! I’ve been teaching in South Korean universities for the past 10 years and have spent a lot of time honing my ESL-game in order to make my classes as engaging, interactive and interesting as possible. Here are my top 5 ESL activities that will help you along that same path! Click the title of each activity for more specific details about what each one is and how to set it up in your class. Retell the Story 1-2-3–This is an extremely…

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ESL Speaking Bingo | Fun ESL Games for Kids

ESL Speaking Bingo

Skills: Speaking/listening/writing Time: 20-30 minutes Level: High-Beginner to Advanced Materials Required: Blank “Bingo” grids, or blank paper   ESL Speaking Bingo is a very fun activity that kids, teenagers as well as university students seem to love. Have a list of about 35-40 vocabulary words that you’ve been studying (on the PPT works well). If you use less, the game will be over very quickly. Give the students a pre-made Bingo Grid, or have them draw a 5×5 grid. Then the students fill in the grid randomly from the list of words on the board or PowerPoint. Then, choose someone to…

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ESL Game: Running Dictation | A Favourite 4-Skills ESL Activity

Running Dictation ESL Game

Why Running Dictation is Awesome Running dictation is a classic ESL game because it’s fun, covers all 4 skills in a single activity and it also gets students up out of their seats and moving around. It’s like the gold-standard of ESL games! You can use it for adults, university students, kids-whoever! My variation of running dictation addresses the biggest negative of the game-the yelling and cuts it out completely. Don’t worry—no more angry teachers in neighbouring classrooms! How to Do Running Dictation ESL Game Skills: Reading/speaking/writing/listening Time: 10-20 minutes Level: Beginner to Advanced, 8+ Materials Required: Printed sentences, blu-tack…

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Charades ESL Game | Fun ESL Game for Kids

charades esl speaking game

Charades ESL Game: An Introduction Skills: Speaking Time: 20-30 minutes Level: Beginner to Advanced Materials Required: White board You can use this charades ESL speaking game to review whatever you’re studying. For example, verbs work especially well. Write out some phrases or words that can be easily acted out on small pieces of paper and put them in an envelope. It’s an excellent way to review vocabulary. Related: Top 10 ESL Review Activities Divide the class up into two teams. The first team sends one person, the captain up to the front and they have to act out and describe…

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Small Talk ESL Activity: Practice this important skill

small talk

Small Talk Activity for ESL/EFL Students This small talk ESL activity is the perfect way to get your students speaking English. It’s ideal for a warm-up activity to start the class, or as a way to finish off a lesson on small talk. You can use it for beginners to advanced students, but you’ll have to adjust the length of the conversations. Small talk is an important, but often overlooked skill. This is because it’s not that easy to practice it in a natural way in a very artificial classroom. Check out this small talk ESL activity below for a…

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Taboo: an ESL Speaking Game for Kids and Adults

words

This is an excellent ESL speaking game for kids or adults to review vocabulary words at the end of a unit and also to practice using synonyms. Make up a list of around 20-40 words, depending on how long you want to play. Put them on a grid and cut them out, one set per group of 4. Put students in groups of 4 and give them one set of words. The first student selects the first word (they are face-down and hidden) and has to describe the word, but cannot say it. The other three students can guess what…

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Ice breaker Speaking Activity | English Icebreaker Activity

icebreaker

Skills: Speaking/ Listening Time: 10-30 minutes Level: Beginner-Advanced Materials Required: nothing A way that you can get your students to remember names (and you too!) is to do this simple ice breaker speaking activity. Go around the class, and have students say, “My name is ______and I like _______.” The next student repeats the previous ones, and adds their own. it goes on until it finally gets to you and you can impress the students with your memorization abilities! It works best for smaller classes of less than 10. For more advanced students, you can choose something more difficult than…

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Rocks Scissor Paper ESL Speaking Game | Fun ESL Activity Kids

rock scissor paper

Skills: Reading/ Speaking/ Listening Time: 20 minutes Level: Beginner-Intermediate Materials Required: Question/Answer papers (~5/student) Make up strips of paper with questions and answers (on separate papers). Give each student 5 random papers, a mix of both questions and answers. They have to walk around the class finding their “match.” Once they do, they can rock scissor paper and the winner takes both papers. The students with the most points at the end of the allotted time are the winners. This is the perfect game to do for review in basic conversation classes before the midterm or final exam. Free: 40…

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20 Questions ESL Speaking Game | 20 Questions ESL Students

twenty questions

I’m sure you’ve played the game “20 questions” before. It’s basically where someone thinks of a secret noun (person, place or thing) and the other team or person gets to ask up to 20 questions to figure out what it is. It’s a fun way to get ESL/EFL students practicing questions and working on some basic vocabulary. For kids, I often narrow down the choices for them and sometimes will allow fewer questions. Perhaps 10 questions instead of 20. Some topic examples include: animals, jobs or sports. It just depends on whatever you’re studying in class that day. Here’s how…

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