There are quite a few games to play with intermediate ESL students, and as far as necessary materials, most of them do not require more than a few sheets of paper. The following are suggestions for classroom activities. All are fun ways to encourage conversation and get students speaking English comfortably.
The Story Game
The story game is best played while sitting in a circle. Someone (either the teacher or a brave volunteer) starts off the story after the group has decided on the basics: theme, setting, etc. The story then progresses around the circle as each person adds a sentence to the story.
The Newspaper Headline Activity
This activity can either be a fun activity independent of a lesson or part of the main lesson. The teacher gives students a few crazy newspaper headlines, either from real newspapers or from his or her own imagination.
Students must then, in groups, come up with a short article (at least one paragraph) for one of the headlines. Then, these groups can brainstorm again to come up with their own crazy headlines and read them aloud to the class as though they are a newsboy trying to sell sensational papers.
Healthy Competition: A Teamwork Activity
Divide the students into small groups (small groups are often more conducive to conversation than a large, full-class discussion). Have each team work together on some sort of game, puzzle, or riddle. The puzzle could be something like a fill-in-the-blank or crossword, or it could be a figure-out-what-this-idiom-could-mean game.
The teams, after finding solutions, must then present their results to the class. Whichever team gets their puzzle correct wins. To add excitement to the game, limit the students' working time to five or ten minutes.
Vocabulary-Building Skits
Explain that the students are going to play an improvisation game and be actors for the day. Divide them into groups of two, three, or four, depending on the size of the class. Give each student two slips of paper, and have them write a word (noun, proper noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) on each slip.
Collect the papers and redistribute them. Each group must perform a skit, with the setting, subject, and all other conditions to be decided by everyone else in the class. During the skit, the group must use all of the words they have been given. This is a fun game that can bring about a lot of laughs in the classroom.
Tried-and-True ESL Lesson Games and Activities
The old standbys also work for groups of intermediate students of English: Hangman, Twenty Questions, and I Spy are just a few of them. (When playing Hangman, use more challenging words that the students may have recently learned.) These games are best used when there is extra time in the class, and students usually enjoy them as long as they do not get overused.
Most of these activities can be used to fill an entire lesson, and games such as Twenty Questions can serve as a great end-of-class filler activity when the planned lesson ends a few minutes early. All of the above games and activities are good ways to encourage intermediate students of English to speak in the classroom. Consistent use of conversation activities can help them become more comfortable speaking the language outside the classroom as well.
Suzanne Swartz - During college, Suzanne spent a semester in southwest Germany. After receiving her B.A. in History and German Studies, she went back to ...
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