ESL Communicative Games for Classroom Learning

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1. 1- Hot-seat: A lifetime favorite for most language teachers, this game has long been the
cornerstone of most ESL classroom speaking activities and games. It is quite easy to play
yet it gets a lot of language out of students if well thought out. How to Play
2. 2 - What's this? : A Vocabulary guessing game with flashcards - How to play
3. 3- Mallet Mallet: A fun game for practicing vocabulary and sentences. How to play.
4. 4- Chinese whispers: A fun game for listening and getting correct pronunciation of words.
How to play.
5. 5- Miming games: Excellent game for eliciting description of actions and adjectives.How
to play
6. 6- Fly swatting: A vocabulary practice game with speaking and pronunciation practice.
How to play. Read more...
7. 7- Steal, Swap, Bust and Number Card Game : A Fun Game for the class. How to Play
8. 8- Get Rich or Die Trying : Great Fun Game! Combines several game ideas in one
game.
9. 9- Freeze!or Stop! Ball Game: This game can practice any language point and it is very
easy to set up. How to play. Read more...
10. 10- Hop and Say + Rocks, Paper & Scissors : Perfect and exciting game with cards
lined up on the floor. Learn how to play
11. 11- Talking Volleyball: A high-energy game; talking volleyball will practice vocabulary and
simple sentences in a communicative way. How to play. Read more...
12. 12 - Dice Game : A great communicative game to practice almost any language skill, by
rolling the dice. Read more on how to play>>>
13. 13 - Word Association Game: Communicative vocabulary Game by using flash cards
Read More on How to Play >>>
14. 14- Number Game: This is a listening game usually used as a warmer using numbers.
Read more>>>
15. 15 - Guessing Game : With this game cards are stuck behind a student's back and
he/she asks questions to guess. How to Play>>>

16. 16- Swap Seats: This seat swapping game gets kids very excited. Kids sit in a circle.
Prepare some word or phrase cards and put the up side down in the middle of the circle.
How to play>>>
17. 17- Musical chairs: How to play- Bring some nice kids music to class. Put chairs in circle
and make it short by one chair. Students listen to music and when you stop it they sit
down. The one person who remains standing answers a few questions. Game continues.
ESLTOWER.COM : Many Free English Grammar & Vocabulary Exercises for Teachers and Students

Reading, writing/spelling games

ESLTOWER.COM : Many Free English Grammar & Vocabulary Exercises for Teachers
and Students
1- Running Dictation: Skills: Reading, writing ; Requirements: pen and paper and text
excerpts. How to play.
2- Running Dictation for Large classes and Young Learners' Classes- This is excellent
for beginners to elementary levels. Also adapted for large classes
3- I spy something Skills- Vocabulary, speaking, reading and listening How to play
4- Memory or Concentration game : Great game for many language skills practice .Skills:
Ideal for teaching words that have a close relationship. How to play- Sample
5- Spelling relay: Skills: Spelling and reading of words. How to play.
6- Word searching games: Reading and spelling game. How to play
7- Mallet Mallet for spelling. How to play. This is a variation of Mallet Mallet described
above. But this time students take turns spelling a word.
8- Chopstick relay : This is a variation of Spelling relay but this time using chopsticks and
alphabet cards.
9- Spelling Bee: Teacher says a word and student spells. Any mistake not allowed.

Swap seat game

This seat swapping game gets kids very excited. Kids sit in a circle. Prepare some word or phrase
cards and put the up side down in the middle of the circle. When teacher says SWAP, students
have to stand up and run to another seat(change seats). The teacher tries to find a seat also. There
will be one student standing. That student will have to pick up a card and use it to make a

sentence. After that the game proceeds until you sense they have gained much speaking practice
in the lesson focus of the day.
This game is good for all revision activities in ESL kids classes.
Variations: Simply ask questions to the student standing if you don't have time to make cards.
You can ask questions related to the topic. For example if I was teaching Weather and Seasons. I
would ask the one standing questions like:

When is winter in your country?

What's the weather like in the winter?

What do we wear in the winter?

Skills to practice: Any type of skill.

Levels: All levels of kids (simplify for very low levels)
Requirements: A ball, flash cards
Class size: 10 - 20
General rule- Ball stops with a student, s/he has to do something

How to play:

Bring picture cards or word cards to class which you want to practice. Refresh the
students memory of the vocabulary on the cards
Pre-teach the words: Stop or freeze and make them know if they hear that, it means
they cannot move. They must be still.
Next, tell students they are going to play a game. Ask students to sit in a circle. Put the
cards face down in the middle of the circle.
Tell them they will pass the ball around the circle very quickly until you say stop. Warn
that no student can hold the ball for more than two seconds. As the ball is being circled
around, the teacher randomly shouts Stop.
The student who is holding the ball when you shout stop cannot pass it to the next. S/he
remains still with the ball. Ask the student to pick up a card from the pile of cards facing
down. The student reads or tells the other students what is on the card. Depending on
their English level, s/he makes a sentence or more with the word on the card.
Ask questions to prompt weaker students. If the student cannot make a sentence(s), s/he
should hand the card to another student to help, or simply ask any student to help. Then

the game continues until the cards are finished.

Variations:
You can make it more competitive by giving points to any student who makes a sentence
with the card or word which is picked up.
N: B- This is a flexible game, so it can always be adapted depending on the levels of the
students
First the teacher introduces the vocabulary by showing students the cards one after the other.
Then later, holds the cards to the chest, making sure students can't see. Draw a big smiley face
above and about 6 small smiley faces below. The big face represents the teacher and small faces
represent all the students. Students try to guess what card the teacher is holding to his/her chest.
Every time they make a wrong guess, the teacher gets a point. When they make a right guess, the
students get a point and the teacher pretends to be disappointed that the students are gaining a
point. Keep playing until you have exhausted the cards. The students love to beat their teacher.
Lots of fun with this!
Hot Seat -ESL Speaking Game - How to Play
A lifetime favorite for most language teachers, this game has long been the cornerstone of most
ESL classroom speaking activities and games. It is quite easy to play yet it gets a lot of language
out of students if well thought out. With hot-seat, a student seats with his/her back to the board or
to the teacher. The teacher displays a word or a flash card. Other students describe what is on the
card to enable the student guess what it is. For higher level students teachers can make hot-seat
more challenging by writing a number of TABOO WORDs on the board. For example if a
teacher shows the students a flash card of say a HAIRDRESSER. Taboo words could be words
likes CUT & HAIR. Students cannot use these two words to describe hairdresser.This forces the
students to find other ways of describing the word without the taboo words. Taboo words are
most often words that can easily give away the word on the flashcard.