English Learning Games for Teaching

赵宝斌 编辑 整理

 Students greatly welcome games. They can create a cheerful and light-hearted environment and arouse students’ interest in learning English. Games are considered one of the most effective ways to improve efficiency（效果） in language learning. Following are some 50 games for various levels of English students. I collected some of them and created others.

  Vocabulary and Phrase Games

1. A Game of Collocation Cards

Aim: To let students review and memorize collocations（搭配）.

Preparation: Make a set of cards with the verbs (or verb phrases) such as take, have, do, play, make, and give. Prepare a second set with nouns (noun phrases) such as homework, a meeting, a trip, a test, a lecture and basketball.

Procedure: Two or more than two students can play this game. The purpose is to form a collocation.

1) Put all those cards in random order in a pile on the table with students sitting around.

2) In turns, each student takes 6 cards from the pile one by one. Then one student takes one card from the pile. The student  keeps it if he/she finds a collocation with one of the cards in his hand or he/she thinks he/she can find a collocation easily with this card later. Otherwise, she/he gives it to the next person.

3) The next person keeps it, if he/she finds a collocation with one of the cards in his/her hand.

4) Then the student chooses one of the difficult cards in his/her hand and gives it to the next person.

5) If he/she cannot form a collocation, he/she takes another card from the pile. The next person does the same until one of them forms three collocations.

The first person that forms three correct collocations wins.

Variation: You can play this game with prepositional phrases and adjective phrases, as well as verb phrases or you can put all these together.

 2. Word Spelling Cards

Aim: To review and memorize the English words students have learned.

Preparation: Make at least 100 cards with the following written on them: letters, roots, suffixes（词缀）, such as, -tion, -ment, and -or prefixes, such as, -un, -im and –ir, clusters of vowels, such as, -ow-, -ight and -oo- and consonants（辅音）, such as, th-, ch- and sp-.

Procedure: Two or more than two students can play this game.

1) Put all cards in random order in a pile on the table with students sitting around.

2) Each student takes 4, 5, or 6 cards from the pile one by one. (Students determine the number of cards they hold in their hands before the game starts. The bigger the number, the easier the game is.)

3) The object is to construct meaningful words (a word found in the dictionary) by putting the cards together. When successful, the student shows the word to the other players and puts the cards aside. At the same time, he/she gets the same number of additional cards from the pile.

4) The first player tries to form more words, which he/she shows to the other players. If he/she cannot form a meaningful word, he/she can take another card from the pile.

5) If he/she still fails to form a word, he/she chooses one from his/her cards and gives it to the next person.

6) The next person can get this card if he/she can form a word with the other cards. Each time a word is formed, the student shows the card(s) to the other players and puts the card(s) aside.

7) If the player cannot form a word with the card given by the previous player, he/she can get one from the pile and try to form a word. Again, if a player fails to form a word, he/she selects one of his/her cards and gives it to the next person. The next person will do the same.

Finally, the person who gets the most meaningful words wins.

 3. Preposition Cards

Aim: To practise prepositions.

Preparation: Write a number of prepositions (say, 10–20) on separate cards. Each student has a set of the cards.

Procedure: The aim is to make up sentences using common prepositions.

1) Students can hold the cards in their hands or put them on the desk.

2) The teacher says a noun, a verb or an adjective or a phrase (or writes on the blackboard.)

3) The students think of a sentence quickly using one of the prepositions on their cards. The student who thinks his/her sentence is right can raise his/her hand and the teacher nominates（指定） him/her. He/She reads out the sentence. If the teacher says "correct" (the sentence is correct in grammar and meaning), the student can put that preposition card aside.

4) The procedure is repeated. The student who surrenders all his/her cards first will win.

 4. Bingo

Level: Absolute beginner to lower intermediate

Aim: to review or preview letters, or vocabulary

Materials: item list, bingo cards (students can make these)

Procedure: Draw a 9-square box (as in tic-tac-toe) and ask students to draw a picture with the target words in each box. You might draw each picture on the board in random（随机） order and have the students draw them in their grid. (This is very useful since you can review the words together with the whole class as you go along and help students with ideas of how to draw them). Then draw the pictures in your box on the board and ask the students to choose a word. Choose the students at random. When they get a bingo (any three in a row), they get a team point, a card or a reward. A variation may be to reward them only if they get a bingo before you. This makes it more challenging and covers more vocabulary.

 5. Slap it

Aim: to recognize words and listen for relevant information

Preparation: a set of 10-15 pictures of different kinds of food items for each team of 4 to 6 people

Procedure: Put the items on a desk and the students sit around the desk. T

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