We’ve all been there! You realise your classes are not getting quite the level of interest that you would like, perhaps even low level behavior problems are creeping in. Whenever this happens I turn the focus back onto myself and ask myself: ‘Am doing as much as I can to keep my ESL/English class interesting and fun?’.
To keep ESL classes interesting and fun, make sure you keep the student’s needs at the heart of everything you do. Keep their interests, motivations, learning styles and behavior patterns in mind when you are planning your lessons. Vary activities and classroom management to keep things fresh for the learners.
Now, I am going to jump right in and hit you with a list of activities, strategies and ideas that I have regularly used over the last couple of decades as fun ways to teach English. This is a mixed bag of items, and not everything will fit your classes needs so obviously it is down to you to tweak these ideas to make them fun for your classes. Here goes…
1. Use Real Life Stories For ESL
The best stories I have used in class have been my own personal stories. When you create a lesson based around your own story it creates a much greater sense of interest than if it is about some person they have never heard of before.
My stories generally come from my experience travelling or from teaching in other countries and because they are first hand I can describe them in incredible detail and answer any of their questions immediately.
I use the story about the time I was held at gun point in Nepal to demonstrate past simple and past perfect. I then give students photos from that story to reorganise and create their own version of events.
I use a story about my bag not arriving at Kathmandu airport and all the problems that caused to teach the third conditional. We make the day better by using the third conditional which we co-construct together. I follow this by them making their worst days better.
Even if you don’t have your own exciting stories to tell (although I bet you do!) then why not use some other real life stories. I use Joe Simpson Touching the Void (teachit.co.uk resources) and Endurance (Shackleton’s incredible survival story – lesson plan) as projects to practice all four skills.
We read summaries of the stories, create glossaries, watch documentaries, act out parts of the stories, rewrite parts and so on too.
Finally, your students can obviously recount their own interesting true life stories, or a made up one with the rest of the class having to question the story to get as much detail as possible and decipher if the story is really true or not.
Of course, if you can build your stories around their interests then all the better!
2. What Happens Next?
Use video clips of genres of movies, cartoons, documentaries that you know your students are keen on. Play the clip and at a particularly key moment pause the video and let pairs or small groups guess what happens next.
Students then have to present their ideas to the group in turn before the remainder of the clip is played. Points can be awarded for the closest predictions.
This works particularly well for crime documentaries/clips, and funny clips, whilst teaching ‘going to’ or ‘time connectors’. You might also be interested in 15 Speaking Projects and Activity Ideas, here.
3. ESL Grammar Auctions
Next time you mark your student’s books, write down the sentences that contain errors in them. Type this up and print it out to give to the students at the start of class. Give students a set amount of time to try and correct the sentences and decide how many points they want to ‘gamble’ on themselves correcting the sentence accurately. I usually allow them between 1-5 points to bet on each sentence.
Go through the sentences in turn explaining the corrections and get students to keep a running total of their accumulated points score.
Students find this particularly purposeful when they notice their sentences being used.
4. ESL Online Games
Even in-class, online games might still have there place. I use Quizlet games to break lessons up and get students doing something they seem to want to do as much as possible these days – stare at screens!
A few other good ones of course are: Kahoot, quizziz, eslgamesplus, englishclub.com,
5. Teach English/ESL With Songs
Liven up your Monday mornings with ESL song gap fills. These are great for demonstrating how sound linking works.
A lot of my students really struggle to figure out what native speakers are saying when they speak in ‘chunks’ and blend their words together. Songs provide the ideal practicing ground for showing how this really works.
Remember, when a word ends in a consonant sound and the next word starts with a vowel sound then these words will link together. I usually ask students to underline these words in the lyrics before they listen so they can literally see and hear this process happening.
There are lots of other features of pronunciation that you can also point out when using songs and you can also dig into the meanings of the lyrics too. These can be a great tool for practicing the skill of inference.
My favorite website for ESL song gap-fills is by far: esolcourses.com
6. Throw The Seating Plan Out The Window!
Get students sitting in different places, talking and interacting with people that they usually don’t. This can help stop students from ‘switching off’ in group work which they might start to do if they are always with the same people.
Even better, change the table and chair arrangement in the room to create a completely different group dynamic.
7. ESL Movie Review Challenge
Everyone loves a good movie right? So, why not let students review a movie of their choice. Normally, I will show a few movie reviews and examine the types of words and phrases I would expect to hear and the structure of a typical movie review.
I would then give the students a certain amount of time to produce their own. This could be either a ‘live’ presentation or a video they have recorded of themselves.
I prefer getting students to record the video because they can then also add in real photos and even movie clips from the movie they are reviewing. They can even add a nice background if you have a green screen.
If you don’t have a green screen you can of course just put up a bunch of green posters on the whiteboard which works just fine. I do this and record the students’ reviews using Zoom which then allows you to add a background.
You don’t have to do movie reviews either, if you have a more serious group of students then you could have them reviewing certain types of documentaries that contain the key vocabulary that you/they are targeting.
Recommended for you: 15 Research Projects For ESL Students
8. ESL Realia Teaching Strategies
This is so simple but works every time. ESL really is not that complicated and bringing in meaningful items to discuss, analyze, break down, put into a story, use in a role play really brings out the imagination in students.
All it requires is a bit of imagination on your part. Simply bring in items that you have used over the last few weekends, normal everyday items as well as more unusual items.
items that work well for me are maps of places I have recently visited, a new piece of tech equipment, flyers for a local night spot, walking sticks, umbrellas, plastic snakes and insects, hats, essneitall all manner of items can be used.
Simple starter activities can simply be having students guess the objects by feeling them in a bag and describing them to the class. Or to domeonstarte the objects and have students guess when, where and why the last time you used them was.
You will of course want to have selected a certain set of lexis or grammar points you wish to mould your tasks around and to monitor and feedback to students as they are putting together whatever activity it is you have asked of them, otherwise it can just end up being a ‘free for all’ which can be great just for fun and fluency practise but some more task oriented students will not appreciate this approach used too often.
Discover more Ways To Support ESL Students In The Classroom, here
9. Backs To The Board ESL Game
An old classic which I return to time and time again especially when I can sense that the students are not as engaged as I would like. If you haven’t used this before then give this a go: split the group into teams of about 5 or 6 in size.
Have one student sat on a chair in front of the board facing the rest of the class. The teacher then writes a keyword on the board behind them. The rest of the group have to explain to them the meaning of the word on the board and get their team member to say the word without them looking at the board.
This is great for recycling vocabulary and it works well with all size groups. I have done this with groups of up to 50 in size with the only difference being I had the students sat around tables with one person facing away from the board.
Rotate the person guessing the words every few words and use a mix of really easy words at the beginning to get people into it before mixing in harder words.
10. Google Earth For ESL Teaching
Send students off to visit far flung places of the earth and experience new places virtually.
Tasks that fit in nicely with this are: past tense postcards, trip reports, adjective building, planning a gap year for a future tense focus, geographical features lessons, and many more applications besides.
The NatGEo 360 videos are also great for this and work awesomely with Google card classes which can be attained really cheaply. I’d recommend getting a class set so that you can all use them at the same times.
11. Get Your Balls Out!
Have you ever played beer pong? Well, it just so happens to be a great game for practising pretty much any type of English language of your choice. All you have to do is arrange a bunch of upside down plastic cups and arrange them as per this picture.
Students then take turns to bounce a ping pong ball into the upturned cups. Should they successfully land in a cup they then have to complete the task/question/challenge of your own choice, essentially whatever you want them to practice.
Activities related to past lessons works well as they should already know what is expected of them. I know this sounds kind of lame but trust me, it works!
12. Nerf Gun Mania
Can’t get much simpler than this! Let students shoot targets on the board in return for an opportunity to complete an English related task.
13. ESL Debate Lessons
You can’t go too far wrong with a good old fashioned debate. As far as I am concerned there are two really important things you need to o to make sure your debate goes well.
- Give students enough time to research sold arguments to support whatever it is they are supposed to debating for.
- Make sure students have also thought about what arguments their opponents are likely to come up with and to think about their counter arguments in advance.
- Students must respond to the argument stated, i.e. they cannot just state one of their own points, they must listen carefully to the argument and directly respond to that point.
There are a bunch of really well done activities and speaking frames for esl debates here.
14. ESL Puzzles
An oldie but a goodie. Nowadays there are loads of easy ways to create puzzles directly relevant to what your students are studying and/or interested in. Try puzzlemaker for example
If you are stuck for time you can even just roll with some of the generic ESL puzzles on sites such as eslpuzzle.com
You might also be interested in a popular article I wrote about research proven ways to teach vocabulary, here.
15. ESL Role Plays
Drama is a great way to get students involved and interested in ESL/EFL lessons.
I often use these to tackle some PSHE type issues at the same time which can bring a ‘real world edge’ to proceedings. Here is an example of some of the role plays I have successfully used in the past:
| EXAMPLE ESL ROLE PLAYS (ADVANCED) Role Play 1: Facilitator – introduce the situation to the group: character, location, relevant background info. Student 1: You are a 3rd year student at a top UK university. You are the lead singer in a band and very popular with the opposite sex and love the attention you get. You have developed a drug habit (you decide which one) and like the people you hang out with to do it too. Recently a new student has caught your eye. You want the new student to be one of your group (or more) and really want them to try the drugs you will take with you to the concert you are playing in tonight. How will you try to persuade them to join in? Act this meeting out… Student 2: You are a new student at a top university in the UK. You really want to fit in and make new friends. Even though you have never taken drugs before you think you are old enough to experiment a bit. You are going to a concert tonight and might be offered drugs. How will your body react to drugs? What happens at the concert? Act this meeting out… Facilitator: Tell the group what actually happened to the people involved in the short, medium and long term. How did things end up? Act out a possible negative medium/short/long term scenario! Role Play 2: Facilitator – introduce the situation to the group: character, location, relevant background info. 6th form student: You have started smoking marijuana in the last few months. You think it is not really a drug and can do no harm and most of your friends do it. Your mum/dad finds out about your habit and have come to confront you about it. You don’t want to talk to them about it but eventually you discuss this situation with them. What do you say to them? Will you change? How does the situation end. Act the confrontation out… Parent – Your son/daughter has been acting strange lately and their most recent report wasn’t as good as normal. They have been very quiet and moody at times. Recently you found some hashish in a coat pocket while you were washing their clothes and everything now makes sense. Go to confront your son/daughter and try to convince them of the dangers of smoking marijuana in the short and long term. What will you say to them? How might they react? Be prepared! Act the confrontation out… Facilitator: Tell the group what actually happened to the people involved in the short, medium and long term. How did things end up? Act out a possible negative medium/short/long term scenario! Role Play 3: Facilitator – introduce the situation to the group: character, location, relevant background info. Student 1 – You are not sleeping well and are having problems concentrating during lectures. This has started to affect your grades and your parents are not happy about your lack of progress. You explain this problem to a friend who offers you something they call ‘smarties’ to improve your concentration. You ask them loads of questions about it and all their replies are positive but you are still not sure about something. Act out this conversation… Student 2 – You want to help a friend out. They are struggling with their studies and the pills (Ritalin) you are taking have helped you concentrate a lot so far. Don’t tell them about the negative side effects you have had so far (panic attacks, nervousness and strange hallucinations) unless they ask! Act out the conversation. Facilitator – Tell the group what actually happened to the people involved in the short, medium and long term. How did things end up? Act out a possible negative medium/short/long term scenario! Role Play 4: Facilitator – introduce the situation to the group: character, location, relevant background info. Student 1 – Recently your boyfriend/girlfriend has been going out late partying every night and you are pretty sure they have been taking some kind of drugs although you are not sure yet. Tell them you are worried about them and try to find out more about this and do what you can to convince them to stop taking them… Student 2 – Your boyfriend/girlfriend is not happy about your new party life style and you think they are a bit jealous of you, as you have so many new friends and think she just needs to chill out. Offer them your new party pill ‘molly’ and explain how good it makes you feel. Listen to what she has to say, can she persuade you to stop taking Molly? Facilitator – Tell the group what actually happened to the people involved in the short, medium and long term. How did things end up? Act out a possible negative medium/short/long term scenario! |
Also try: Fun Games For Middle School Students
16. ESL Drama Activities
Role plays are not the only type of drama exercises that can be used in the ESL/EFL classroom. Here are three more options:
- Freeze frame – this is where you give small groups of students a topic and you then they have to discuss and organise themselves in a way the would represent that concept/idea. For example, the word could be ‘surrender’. Students would then have to work out what they word meant and discuss how best to present this meaning by creating a freeze frame. A freeze frame is just a still, or a picture of a scene that you would take with a camera, basically, everyone poses in a certain position. Other groups of course have to guess the word being represented by the freeze frames (more here on freeze frames).
- Improv – If you have an intermediate or above group you should definitely try this! Pairs of students stand at the back of the class with students facing them. The teacher then flashes up a topic at the front of the class, something like ‘old school friends meeting ten years later’, or ‘press conference after an alien invasion’. The pair at the front then have to act out that situation making it up as they go along. Have a decent supply of real and unrealistic situations up your sleeve and see what they can come up with. This is great for practicing informal/practical English with a focus on sound linking and intonation. Try it!
- Charades – this is another obvious one but can definitely break the monotony on a Friday afternoon! Students simply act out keywords and other students have to guess the word. An easy starter and a nice way to review vocabulary learnt at the end of a topic.
- Puppets – there are always students that are not big fans of acting or being in front of everyone so one way to get around this issue was to get students to do the activities with puppets i.e. they either made paper, or used sock puppets which they would control and use in dialogues. It is amazing how using puppets would engage some students so much more and encourage them to take far more language risks than they usually would – highly recommended!
17. Customized ESL Quiz Shows
Blockbusters, countdown, spelling bees, who wants to be a millionaire are great for ESL students are they all tend to know the format of the show and what they need to do.
Your job is therefore to ensure questions are at the appropriate level and to make sure that everyone gets a fair shot at being the contestants or at being the show host, director, and so on.
Lots of fun can be had with this but some thought is needed as to what exact language it is that you are targeting to be learned/revised, or whether you are just happy for them to use it as fluency practise.
Countdown (non customizable)
How To Make Language Teaching Fun
As well as the students having fun; I am a great believer that the teacher should be having fun also. If the teacher is having fun then the students are probably also having fun. How do you do this? Well, allied to all the ideas above a teacher’s attitude is of utmost important.
Why not teach with a smile and don’t take life too seriously, nothing bad is going to happen if a student doesn’t quite understand the present perfect tense after a couple of lessons.
You do not have to save the world just keep chipping away at it bit by bit and allow the language learning process to unfold for your students in its own good time.
Sure, there may be pressures from management, from parents and students expectations but that doesn’t mean you should sacrifice your sanity and happiness in the pursuit of the perfect lesson. Chill out and enjoy the time engaging with your students – they may like you more than you think!
Anyway, that’s a few of my thoughts. I hope they have helped you pick up a few fun ways to make learning English/ESL more fun for your students and for your own satisfaction.