1. Spot the vocabulary

This is a visual activity which helps make the process of recalling vocabulary motivating and memorable. My students enjoy the 'suspense' aspect at the start, which really gets them involved.

I find this short activity works well particularly with lower levels, for vocabulary that has been studied thematically. It can be used at any point in a lesson, as a warmer, filler or lead-in.

Preparation

You will need a picture (this could be an illustration from a book, from the web, a photo, even your own sketch!) that depicts 'things' on a particular theme which your students have recently learnt (ex: furniture/ food/ in the classroom). Prepare one copy per group of two or more students.

 Procedure

•       Hold up the picture so that the students cannot see it, and start building up interest by saying, 'Hey, this picture is interesting, isn't it?', 'Can't you see it?'.

•       Ask students if they want to see the picture, turning it round for them to see just for a couple of seconds. I find my students are really eager to see more of it!

•       Allow them see it for a bit longer, walking round the class for each person to see the picture for a few seconds.

•       After this first 'suspense' stage, hand out a copy of the picture to students in pairs/small groups. Tell them they have two minutes to identify and remember as many things as they can see from the picture, without writing anything down! (Of course you may find your students trying to 'cheat' by writing things down - which of course is fine, as this is likely to help their learning, without their realising!)

•       Once the time is up, take back the pictures and ask students to write a list of everything they can remember.

•       Pin up a few copies of the picture around the class for students to go up and check their list.

•       Whole-class feedback can then involve one of various possibilities, depending on the students' mood by this stage and how much more exposure to the vocabulary items the teacher feels they need:  o students call out the items and the teacher writes them up o the group with the most items reads out their list for the others to check against o each group contributes one item/ the item that forms the longest word on their list.

They can come up to the board to write this o the teacher and/or students pick out any items that they found difficult to remember/pronounce and try to improve their knowledge of these items.

•       A variation of this adds a 'grammar' component to the listing of the vocabulary items. Following a focus on 'There is/ There are', for example, students can write their list under these two headings. Other grammar features that work well are headings for singular/plural, countable/uncountable or adjectives.

Author: Marta Joyce Sabbadini

2.Collocation pelmanism

This activity follows on from the Think article Lexical exploitation of texts. It is often necessary to recycle new words several times in class before they become part of learners' active vocabulary, and the same is true of collocations.

 

Whether the collocations are introduced through a text, as described in the article, or explicitly taught, the memory game pelmanism can provide a useful review activity in a later lesson.

Preparation

Three example sets of collocations are included below, as well as a template for producing your own. I have found that about twelve collocations (i.e. 24 cards to match in pairs) works well.

Procedure

•       Give students, in groups of 3-4, a set of cut-up cards, and instruct them to place all the cards face-down and spread them out on the table.

•       The first student turns over two cards. If the two cards form a strong collocation, he keeps the pair and has another go.

•       If the cards do not collocate, he turns them over again, leaving them in the same position on the table, and the next student has a turn.

•       The winner is the person who has most pairs at the end.

•       In order to collect pairs, learners need to remember the position of the cards as well as the collocations, so it's important that they do not move the cards around too much. It's also a good idea to demonstrate the game with a strong student the first time you use it in class. If you later use the same activity again, you'll probably find that learners remember what to do.

•       Blank template

Tip: When producing your own sets of cards, make sure there are not too many possible collocations other than the ones you intend to practice. It can be very difficult to include only one possible way of combining words, so tell students to look for common collocations, or specifically those covered in the previous class.

•       Verb-noun collocations for routines (Elementary)

L1 interference can often lead to incorrect verb-noun collocations such as 'take a cup of coffee'. This set of cards practices common verb-noun collocations for routines.

•       Business English collocations

In the business world, there are a huge number of collocations which express specific ideas very succinctly, for example, 'customer service’, ‘quality control'. If learners are not familiar with these collocations, they will be forced to explain the concept, which is likely to lead to errors and puts a strain on the listener. This set focuses on business-related noun-noun collocations, which can be particularly problematic for learners.

•       Collocations with phrasal verbs

Advanced level learners may be aware of the meanings of many phrasal verbs, but are not always able to use them appropriately. This is partly because phrasal verbs often have very specific connotations and much narrower collocational fields than the 'synonyms' we use to help learners understand their meaning. For example, if we tell learners that 'turn up' means 'arrive', this can lead to inappropriate utterances like 'What time did you turn up?', implying criticism where this may not be the intention. For this reason it's a good idea to introduce phrasal verbs in context, e.g. through a text, with their common collocates. This set of cards gives an example of how to revise such collocations in a subsequent lesson.

 

Author: Catherine Morley

 

 

3. Quick revision games

 

Divide the class in two teams. Give each team a set of slips with five (or three or two, depending on their level) things they have to name.

 

Examples:

•       Name five things that move

•       Name five drinks

•       Name five things you would be doing if you weren't here

•       Name five ways to get rich

•       Name five animals

 

A member of the team reads the category of things they have to name and the whole team shouts the words.

While team A is doing this, team B have to remain in silence. Then it's team B's turn.

Time each team. The faster team is the winner. 

                                                                                                            Author: Marcelo Elias

 

4.Word association recitation

This is a good way of getting students to memories words and practice their pronunciation. The activity requires no preparation. Procedure

•       With a big class, write a word on the board, for example, ‘Sun'.

•       Get the students to come up with a word that they would associate with that word, for example, 'round'.

•       Write that word beside the original word on the board. Now get the students to come up with an association for the new word.

•       Continue the word association game until you have a good number of words on the board for the size of your class (for a class of 40 people, about 8 words will do).

•       Now get each student to quietly choose a word from the words on the board (they don't have to write it down, just memories it).

•       Confirm things by going through each word asking people to raise their hand if they have chosen that word. You need to do this because if there is a word that nobody has chosen then that word, when it comes time to recite the list, is replaced with a clap.

•       Erase all the words from the board and just leave a circle in the place of each one.

•       Then prompt the students to recite the list from memory by pointing to the circles on the board and asking the students to say their chosen word when the time comes.

•       The students are listening to what word comes before their word as a cue when to say their word. When they get to any unchosen words, the class claps in unison. Go forwards and backwards through the list at varying speeds.

•       Lastly, get all the students to say all of the words together

                                                                                                      Author: Matthew Wilson

 

5. The revision box

This activity can be used for all levels in teaching English as a second language. I use it mainly for intermediate students and they find it interesting.

 

Preparation

The teacher uses a vocabulary box. This box must mainly comprise of words on pieces of paper (either verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc.) all said by the learners themselves in previous lessons. Importantly a lot of words are required for this activity.

Procedure

•       The box with all the words is circulated around the class. Each learner is given a chance to pick a word from which he / she will have to construct a short and grammatical sentence.

•       Each sentence said is written on the board just as the speaker said it. After 12 to 20 sentences the sentences are analyzed to see if they are grammatically correct with the emphasis placed mainly on the word from the vocabulary box.

•       Correction of the sentences can then be done and learners, again depending on time available, prompted to produce the correct sentences with the same word from the box.

It really gets learners talking while at the same time identifying their mistakes.

                                                                              

                                                                                                      Author: Bravoh Linosi

 

6.The comparison game

In this activity, students compare the properties of different but similar words. It can take up to 90 minutes or be done quite quickly using fewer words and is designed for lower intermediate students, though again this depends on the number and complexity of the words used.

Preparation

Prepare a collection of words which have a similar meaning or semantic field or which your students often confuse. Procedure

•       Elicit the word 'similarity' and 'difference'. Write these two words next to each other at the top of the board, and draw a vertical line between them - right down to the bottom of the board.

•       Elicit the difference between a 'pen' and a 'pencil' as an example and put the key words on the board in the relevant sections. You can also elicit grammatically correct sentences with these words (e.g. "You can write with both a pen and a pencil")

•       Write your pairs of words on the board: e.g.  o café - restaurant o newspaper - magazine o kettle - teapot o clock - watch o house - flat

•       Tell your students to copy them down - and ask them to leave spaces on the right under the headings 'similarities' and 'differences'.

•       Divide your class into groups of three and tell each group to work with one pair of words (allocate them so that all the pairs of words are being worked on at the same time, but by different groups).

•       Ask the students to write down as many similarities and differences as possible in note form.

•       After two minutes say "Change!" - Instruct each group to work on the next pair of words.

•       After each group has finished each pair of words, ask the students to regroup, so that each new group is composed of students from different groups.

•       Ask the new group to compare and edit their information - adding, deleting, and modifying points.

•       Get the whole class's attention and elicit the key similarity and difference for each pair of words. Put these key words on the board.

•       Create an example sentence using the keywords which includes a similarity and a difference (e.g. "A kettle is similar to a teapot because you put water in both, but a kettle is different from a teapot because you put cold water in a kettle and boiling water in a teapot.")

•       Split your class into pairs, and ask each pair to write a similar sentence, using their own examples.

•       Get the students to read out some of their sentences.

Why it works

Students use a variety of different faculties, for example brainstorming, short-term memory, and an analysis of their perception of everyday things.

Follow-up

Ask your students to find out the difference between more confused words, e.g. 'university' and 'college'. Give each student different pairs of words to research. These pairs of words will depend on their ability.

 

                                                                                                   Author: Paul Bress

 

7.Stop the bus

This is a great game to revise vocabulary and you can use it with any age group and any level by changing the category headings.

It really gets students focused and working on tasks as a team and can be a saviour to fill the last ten minutes of a class when you have run out of ideas! Procedure

•       Put the students into teams of three or four.

•       Draw on the board a table like the ones below and get each team to copy it onto a piece of paper.

•       Students simply have to think of one item to go in each category beginning with the set letter.

•       Give an example line of answers for the first time you play with a new group. The first team to finish shouts “Stop the Bus!” .

•       Check their answers and write them up on the board and if they are all okay that team wins a point. If there are any mistakes in their words, let the game continue for another few minutes.

•       If it gets too difficult with certain letters (and you can’t think of one for each category) reduce the amount of words they have to get. You can say. “Ok. For this round you can Stop the Bus with 4 columns”. Examples: