These activities got me through some tough spots during my time as an ESL teacher in China. It surprised me how often I’d have 15 minutes or so left at the end of my English class and struggle to fill the time. So that’s when I started researching on how to fill the rest of my time in a fun and productive way.
Over the 4 years I spent in China these are what worked best for me in my ESL classes.
1. Q&A
- When you’re teaching a class of 25-30 students day in and out you get to know them pretty well and I spent a fair bit of time at the beginning of the term asking them to talk about their family, hobbies and so on. But very rarely did they have the confidence to ask me a question about my life; why I came to China, my life before China etc.
- It was only when I actually asked them one day, after a class about English etiquette, if they had any other questions about England or life in England, and wow, did I get a good response from that. They had so many questions, about English family life, social life, and recreational activities. And pretty soon the class got comfortable asking questions about everything. We set some boundaries, of course, and they respected them, and then things became more organized. I began setting a time slot each week and gave them homework of making at least 5 questions to talk about with the class. Then when we finished our lesson and had some free time left, boom, homework out and away we went.
- So, have a try for yourself. Open a simple Q&A lesson in your class and see where it takes you. Maybe your students will surprise you.
2. Word change
- A quick, simple, yet effective game for making students dig through all their vocabulary, but no books of course.
- I would write a simple 4 letter word on the board. Then you could either:
3. What would you do if…?
- A fun game to play with any group of students, I’d simply write “What would you do if…?” on the board and then give an example to one student. Then I’d wait to see what response they gave and then they got to choose the next person.
- I always tried to make it interesting by adding details to some of the student’s answers. Once the students got the hang of the game, questions became hilarious!
- Some good examples are:
4. 20 questions
- This one came to me on the bus with my friend one day when we decided to play, and I thought “Hey, this would be great fun in class!”
A classic from my childhood, 20 questions is one of the best time killers, because it’s just so simple! I’d simply choose a person or object (that’s not too hard to guess) and start the questions. The other students then had 20 questions, and 20 questions only, to ask in order to provide enough information about the object or person to guess what it was.
Oh, and the questions had to be yes or no questions:
The students seemed to love it; I think it was because there were only a limited amount of questions they could ask, so they had to work together
Another way to play was to make it a team game, each team has 10 questions, and whichever team guessed correctly first was the winner.
Over the 4 years I spent in China these are what worked best for me in my ESL classes.
1. Q&A
- When you’re teaching a class of 25-30 students day in and out you get to know them pretty well and I spent a fair bit of time at the beginning of the term asking them to talk about their family, hobbies and so on. But very rarely did they have the confidence to ask me a question about my life; why I came to China, my life before China etc.
- It was only when I actually asked them one day, after a class about English etiquette, if they had any other questions about England or life in England, and wow, did I get a good response from that. They had so many questions, about English family life, social life, and recreational activities. And pretty soon the class got comfortable asking questions about everything. We set some boundaries, of course, and they respected them, and then things became more organized. I began setting a time slot each week and gave them homework of making at least 5 questions to talk about with the class. Then when we finished our lesson and had some free time left, boom, homework out and away we went.
- So, have a try for yourself. Open a simple Q&A lesson in your class and see where it takes you. Maybe your students will surprise you.
2. Word change
- A quick, simple, yet effective game for making students dig through all their vocabulary, but no books of course.
- I would write a simple 4 letter word on the board. Then you could either:
- Change a letter
- Add a letter
- Or take a letter away
3. What would you do if…?
- A fun game to play with any group of students, I’d simply write “What would you do if…?” on the board and then give an example to one student. Then I’d wait to see what response they gave and then they got to choose the next person.
- I always tried to make it interesting by adding details to some of the student’s answers. Once the students got the hang of the game, questions became hilarious!
- Some good examples are:
- If you saw a thief
- If you found a bag of money
- If you couldn't use your phone for a week
4. 20 questions
- This one came to me on the bus with my friend one day when we decided to play, and I thought “Hey, this would be great fun in class!”
A classic from my childhood, 20 questions is one of the best time killers, because it’s just so simple! I’d simply choose a person or object (that’s not too hard to guess) and start the questions. The other students then had 20 questions, and 20 questions only, to ask in order to provide enough information about the object or person to guess what it was.
Oh, and the questions had to be yes or no questions:
- Is it an animal?
- Can you eat it?
- Can you have it as a pet?
The students seemed to love it; I think it was because there were only a limited amount of questions they could ask, so they had to work together
Another way to play was to make it a team game, each team has 10 questions, and whichever team guessed correctly first was the winner.
5. Pictionary
- Another classic game transferred into an ESL activity, Pictionary was a great way to get the students to be more creative during English classes.
Very simple to play:
6. News talks
- I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a typical Englishman in the sense I love a good cup of tea and a newspaper to start off my day.
Quite often in my classes I would talk about things I had read in the paper and this gave me the very simple idea of copying the articles that I found most interesting and reading through them together in class. It’s a great way to improve vocabulary and fluency, as reading aloud gives them a chance to speak English for an extended period of time.
Once we were finished reading the articles, we would have an open discussion, which sometimes would escalate into a debate, about what we had read.
An extremely simple activity if you’re interested in the news, it can also be fairly simple to put together if you’re not, you would just need to read through it once or twice to get familiar with the story first.
7. Why? Because I said so.
- Great fun with a class with an active imagination, if they lack imagination, well, this could be the game to bring it out of them and have fun at the same time.
- The game went like this:
The results were hilarious, especially if I had some imaginative students in the class.
8. Make a story
I first started doing this to review tenses when using verbs, as most students had real trouble talking about things in the past. The biggest problem would be that they could start in the past but could stay there.
Example: “yesterday I went to the shopping mall. It was good fun; me and my friend buy lots of clothes and give them to my mother.”
Those are simple mistakes and so many students have the same problem. Stories are a great way to practice tenses as stories are always in the past.
You can also make it a class activity where you choose as many verbs as there are students and go round the class one by one, each student adding a sentence to the story as you go round.
9. Taboo
Another simple, yet affective game, but this time, it was good for for practicing descriptive language rather than vocabulary. The game was pretty easy to get the hang of; I’d give a student a word, any type of noun. They would then have to describe the noun to the class and they guess what it is. Whoever guesses first was next up. The only twist was that there were certain words that are to do with the said noun that you couldn’t say.
Example: Describe ‘Home’ (you can’t use; house, rest, family).
Simple.
10. Chinese whispers
A game that you can adapt for any ESL class and it was generally a constant hit. I would have the class settle down and then I would write down a fairly long sentence down in my notebook. Then I’d whisper the sentence into a student’s ear and they would then pass it on around the class. The last person in the class would then stand up and say the sentence out loud. It was almost never right!
During my time in China I learnt a lot about my self and also had the chance to learn about other people; how to be entertaining, formal, funny and many more things! I'd highly recommend it to anyone that is thinking about it. It will change your life!
- Another classic game transferred into an ESL activity, Pictionary was a great way to get the students to be more creative during English classes.
Very simple to play:
- Put a load of different words, phrases or idioms into a hat
- Split the class into 2 teams
- Have 1 student come up and choose from the hat
- They then have 1 minute to draw what’s on the paper and their team must guess what it is within the time frame set
- If they can’t guess within the minute then the other team has 1 guess, and 1 guess only
- Whichever team guesses correctly gets a point
6. News talks
- I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a typical Englishman in the sense I love a good cup of tea and a newspaper to start off my day.
Quite often in my classes I would talk about things I had read in the paper and this gave me the very simple idea of copying the articles that I found most interesting and reading through them together in class. It’s a great way to improve vocabulary and fluency, as reading aloud gives them a chance to speak English for an extended period of time.
Once we were finished reading the articles, we would have an open discussion, which sometimes would escalate into a debate, about what we had read.
An extremely simple activity if you’re interested in the news, it can also be fairly simple to put together if you’re not, you would just need to read through it once or twice to get familiar with the story first.
7. Why? Because I said so.
- Great fun with a class with an active imagination, if they lack imagination, well, this could be the game to bring it out of them and have fun at the same time.
- The game went like this:
- Give each student 2 small pieces of paper (but big enough to write a question on)
- Tell them to write a question on one piece starting with why, and answer the question on the other piece of paper.
- Then collect up all the paper and separate them into 2 piles, a ‘why’ pile and a ‘because’ pile
- Shuffle up the cards and hand them out so that each student has one of each card. Make sure when you hand them out you put them face down on the table
- Finally, go around the class asking students what’s on their card.
The results were hilarious, especially if I had some imaginative students in the class.
8. Make a story
I first started doing this to review tenses when using verbs, as most students had real trouble talking about things in the past. The biggest problem would be that they could start in the past but could stay there.
Example: “yesterday I went to the shopping mall. It was good fun; me and my friend buy lots of clothes and give them to my mother.”
Those are simple mistakes and so many students have the same problem. Stories are a great way to practice tenses as stories are always in the past.
- Each student chooses 5 verbs and gives them to the person on their left
- The person on the left proceeds to make a story out of the verbs provided
- When finished they give it back to the person who chose the verbs
- They then read the story to the class and highlight any mistakes they noticed once they’ve finished reading
You can also make it a class activity where you choose as many verbs as there are students and go round the class one by one, each student adding a sentence to the story as you go round.
9. Taboo
Another simple, yet affective game, but this time, it was good for for practicing descriptive language rather than vocabulary. The game was pretty easy to get the hang of; I’d give a student a word, any type of noun. They would then have to describe the noun to the class and they guess what it is. Whoever guesses first was next up. The only twist was that there were certain words that are to do with the said noun that you couldn’t say.
Example: Describe ‘Home’ (you can’t use; house, rest, family).
Simple.
10. Chinese whispers
A game that you can adapt for any ESL class and it was generally a constant hit. I would have the class settle down and then I would write down a fairly long sentence down in my notebook. Then I’d whisper the sentence into a student’s ear and they would then pass it on around the class. The last person in the class would then stand up and say the sentence out loud. It was almost never right!
During my time in China I learnt a lot about my self and also had the chance to learn about other people; how to be entertaining, formal, funny and many more things! I'd highly recommend it to anyone that is thinking about it. It will change your life!
So there you have it, 10 time killer activities written by a teacher here in China. For more on jobs in China and general information on ESL in China,
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YouTube
Google+
Linked in
For all the latest tips and tricks on teaching in China! Head to our website:
www.networkesl.com
To check out the LARGEST database of jobs in China and become part of our team!