Speaking & Conversation Games
These games encourage fluency and real-time interaction.
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20 Questions: One student thinks of a person, place, or thing, and the rest of the class can only ask 20 Yes/No questions to guess it. (Target: Asking questions, vocabulary)
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Chain Story: The teacher starts a story with one sentence. The next student adds a sentence, continuing the narrative. This goes around the room, forcing students to think quickly and use cohesive devices. (Target: Narrative tenses, conjunctions, creative thinking)
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Role Play / Skits: Give students a real-world scenario (e.g., ordering food, asking for directions, a job interview) and have them act it out. You can use cards to assign specific roles or phrases. (Target: Functional language, practical vocabulary)
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"If I Had a Million Dollars..." Students complete the conditional sentence structure. For example, "If I had a million dollars, I would buy a house on the beach." Then, they share their sentences and discuss. (Target: Second Conditional structure)
Read More: The Alchemist
Vocabulary & Memory Games
These focus on word acquisition and retrieval.
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Bingo: Use bingo cards with target vocabulary words or pictures. The teacher calls out definitions or sentences, and students mark the corresponding word/picture. **** (Target: Vocabulary recognition)
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Memory (Concentration): Lay pairs of cards face down. One card has a word, the matching card has its definition or a picture. Students turn over two cards to find a match. (Target: Word-definition/picture matching, memory)
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Pictionary / Charades: Students take turns either drawing a word (Pictionary) or miming an action/phrase (Charades) while their team guesses. (Target: Vocabulary recall, verbs/actions)
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Word Association: The teacher says a word (e.g., "blue"). The first student says a related word (e.g., "sky"). The next student says a word related to "sky" (e.g., "clouds"), and so on. (Target: Semantic fields, rapid word retrieval)
Grammar & Spelling Games
These reinforce language structures and accuracy.
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Tic-Tac-Toe Spelling: Draw a 3x3 grid. To place an 'X' or 'O' in a square, the student must correctly spell a word given by the teacher or use a target grammar structure in a sentence. (Target: Spelling, grammar application)
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Running Dictation: Tape short texts (focused on a specific grammar point) outside the classroom. Students race to run, read a few words, run back, and dictate them to their partner, who writes the full text correctly. (Target: Listening, writing accuracy, target grammar)
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"Hot Seat" Grammar Review: One student sits in the "hot seat" facing away from the board. The teacher writes a target grammar structure or vocabulary item (e.g., "Present Perfect," or "Phrasal Verbs"). The class must give the student clues using only example sentences, and the student must guess the topic on the board. (Target: Grammar review, defining/explaining concepts)
Talha Bin Tayyab