ESL games

1. Name the Place

Level: Any Level
First prepare a list of places about 20 on separate pieces of paper and then divide the students
into groups of 4-6. One member of the group chooses a piece of paper and between the
groups they prepare a dialogue or mini-theatre based on their place. When all the groups have
prepared their work they take it in turns to read or play them out and the other students have
to guess the name of the place it is taking place. A time limit can be based on the level of the
students. I find this works very well with students who do not have enough confidence to just
speak without preparation, but after the exercise they gain a lot of confidence by trying to
speak by not looking.
Submitted by Gina Tuncer( practical teacher in Turkey)

2. Martian
Level: Medium to Difficult
Tell your class you are a Martian and you are inhabiting a human body to study human ways.
You then ask about virtually anything in the room, and ask follow up questions:

What is this?
It's a pen.
What's a "pen"?
You use it to write.
What is "write"?
You make words with it on paper.
What are "words"?
ETC...
You can make it as difficult as possible for your higher level students; at some point, though,
you'll need to say "OK, I understand", and go to the next object. Even your best students will
eventually get stuck on this one!
Submitted by Chris Mattson

3. Battle Ships - A Vocabulary Game

Level: Easy to Medium
Preparation:
Divide the students in to groups of four or five. Then ask the student to make the name for
their ships for example with the names of animals, cities, movie stars or let them find their
own favourite names.
Ask them to choose the Captain and the Shooter. The captain's duty is to memorize his ship's
name, so he can reply if somebody calls his ship's name. The shooter's duty is to memorize
the names of the ships of 'their enemies', so he can shoot them by calling their ship's name.
Activity:
Arrange all the captains in a circle, the ships' crews must line up behind their captains. The
shooter is the last crew member in line.
The teacher must decide a lexical area of vocabulary; this vocabulary will be used to defend
their ships from the attacks. Every student (except the shooters) must find their own words.
The lexical area for example is "Four Legged Animals". Give the students 1-2 minutes to find
as many possible words as they can and memorize them.
Start the game by calling a ship's name, for example the ships name is "THE
CALIFORNIAN". The captain of THE CALIFORNIAN must reply with a word from the
lexical area given, for example he says "TIGER" followed by his crews behind him one by
one, "COW"; "SHEEP" until it is the shooters turn and he calls out the name of another ship
and the captain of the ship called must reply and his crews must do the same thing. No word
can be repeated.
If the captain is late to reply (more than 2 seconds) or his crew cannot say the words or a
word repeated or the shooter shoots the wrong ship (his own ship or the ship that has already
been sunk) the ship is sunk, and the crew members can join the crew of another ship.
The teacher can change the lexical area for the next round.
In the last round there will be two big groups battling to be the winner.
Submitted by: Agung Listyawan

4. Taboo
Level: Medium to Difficult
This game is a simplified version of the board game "Taboo".
Before class, create several index cards. On each card write one word in a large font with a
circle around it, and underneath write 2-4 related words in a smaller font. The goal is for
students to get their teammates to guess the circled word. They can say anything they like to
try to make them guess, except for the words written on the card.

Divide the class into groups of two, and write each group on the board to keep track of points.
Place a desk in the front of the room facing the class, so that someone sitting it has their back
to the board and can't read it. Place another desk in front of it, so the teammates are facing
each other.
Pick a team to go first, and have them choose a card. Have the teammates decide who will
guess and who will talk. The guesser sits with their back to the board. On the board, making
sure the guesser can't see, write the circled word as well as the other taboo words. The talker
then has to try to make their partner guess the circled word without saying it, or any of the
other words. After they guess it have another group come up. When all the groups have gone,
do it again and have the teammates switch roles.
My students really enjoy this game, so much so that they often give the guesser clues even
when it is not their team! It's a great way for students to practice forming sentences, and it
forces them to use words and structures they might otherwise not use.
Submitted by: Mike Amato, Boston, MA, USA

5. Secret Code
Level: Any Level
I sometimes give instructions to my students written in code that they have to interpret before
completing tasks. I've used this at various levels:
Here's an example: to revise alphabet and simple present verbs/vocab.
Tell students the code e.g. each code letter represents the letter that comes before it in the
alphabet a is b, m is n, 'dbu' is cat etc.
Then they decode their message and do the task:
xbml up uif cpbse - walk to the board
kvnq ufo ujnft - jump ten times
To make it more difficult, I've ...
used more complex codes,
let them work the code out for themselves,
have not defined where words end,
have given more complicated tasks or vocabulary
or given them half an instruction which they must decode and then find the classmate with
the other half of their task information.
This activity can be used to review or practise vocabulary or structure or simply be a different
way to introduce the topic for the day's class -- each student gets one or two words to decode
and then the class work to put all the words together. Submitted by: Karen Mack

6. Video Scavenger Hunt

Level: Any Level
Choose a movie, a series of TV commercials or any other video-taped resource that you like
or that learners are familiar with and compile lists of things for viewers or listeners to find. It
is also possible to prepare a library of films and allow the players to search the tapes.
Each team gets a different list. If only one machine is available, a time limit may be set and
the team that finds the most in the allotted time wins. It is also possible to assign this as a
week-long hunt (on student's own time). In such a case, one tape or many tapes can be used.
Here are some suggested categories:
Information: Ask players to find specific facts or figures. These facts may be verbal or visual.
Information found on charts, graphs and in the closing credits of a film are good sources.
Counts: Count the number of times a certain word is said in a clip. Count the number of
people or objects of a certain quality (eg. people who are male, or people wearing blue, or
objects made of wood). Count the number of people doing a particular activity (eg. people
who talk to a particular character, people sleeping in class, people boarding a train). Count
the number of times a particular action is performed (eg. number of times a character goes up
and down stairs, crosses a bridge, lights a cigarette).
Scenes: Find a particular scene (eg. a love scene), location (eg. a river, Paris), view or social
activity (eg. a picnic, a speech).
Speech Acts: Find an example of a speech act. (eg. inviting, refusing, requesting, making an
introduction, apologizing).

7. Fold-over Stories
Level: Any Level
This is an old favorite. Give each student a sheet of blank paper. Write the following words
on the board in a vertical line: WHO, WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN, WHY. Explain that
everyone will be writing a sentence story. Write an example on the board, explain, asking for
suggestions.
Tell them to write someone's name at the top of their paper, i.e., their own, a classmate's, the
teacher's, a famous person that everyone knows; fold the paper over once so no one can see it,
then pass the paper to the person on their right.
Write on the received paper what the subject did (suggest funny or outrageous actions), fold it
over and pass it on to the right.
Continue to write one line, how they did it (adverbs), fold and pass; where-pass; when-pass;
and last of all, why (because...) and pass it one more time.
Have the students unfold their stories, and read them silently. Help anyone who cannot read
what the others wrote, or doesn't understand.

Ask one student at a time to read "their" story aloud, or turn the stories in for the teacher to
read. Funny!
Submitted by: Vicki Konzen

8. Finding the Best Person for the Job

Level: Any Level
The idea of this activity is to review or learn personality adjectives.
Tell the students that they are the owners of a cafe and they have to choose a new
waiter/waitress from a list of four applicants for the job.
The teacher's preparation involves thinking of four personality adjectives for each
applicant.Give the applicants a name and a colour. One applicant should be ideal for the job,
two neutral and the other totally useless. After this the teacher writes each adjective on a
separate card using a different colour pen for each applicant. Four applicants, four colours,
sixteen adjectives altogether.
The next step is to arrive at work early before the students and hide the cards in sixteen
different places around the classroom.
When the class starts, you explain the activity by telling the students their aim is to decide
which applicant is best for the job. There are four applicants, each with their own colour and
a total of sixteen words. The pair that finds all the words and chooses the best applicant first
are the winners. But first they have to find the cards!
Pair the students off. Student A stays put while student B searches for the hidden words.
When a word is found B must read it, (without alerting the other searchers) return to A and
quietly say the word. A writes the word, keeping words of the same colour together. If B
forgets the word or the correct spelling, he /she has to return to the word. A and B should
swap roles after a number of words have been found.
At the end of the activity stick all the words on the board, in their colour groups, under the
correct name. All the students can then discuss why the applicants are/are not suitable for the
job.
The job could be changed depending on what sort of adjectives you would like to focus on as
could the number and difficulty of the adjectives.
Submitted by Colin Guest

9. Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt

Level: Easy to Difficult
This game may require students to leave the classroom depending on how you set it up.

Make a list of things students must take photos of. Then put your students into teams, each
with their own camera and have them go out and take the photos. The team that comes back
first with all the photos is the winner.
Some ideas for lists are:
bus, taxi, car, bicycle, etc.
restaurant, post office, mail box, traffic light, etc.
In the classroom: pencil, pen, eraser, blackboard, etc.
Around the school: principal's office, copy machine, cafeteria, etc.
For further review of vocabulary, have the students look at all the photos and identify other
things that appear in each photo.

8. Betting / Auction
Level: Any Level
CLASS SIZE: 40
PREPARATION
Prepare a worksheet with 20 or so sentences using grammar points you have recently taught.
2/3 of the sentences should include a grammatical mistake.
Make fake money, it is more realistic if you use the currency of whichever country they are
living in.
PART ONE
Divide the students into teams of 5 or so.
The students then have 10 minutes to study the worksheet and decide and mark which
sentences are correct (0) or incorrect (X).
PART TWO
Each team receives a set amount of money.
The instructor(s) reads one sentence (select sentences from the list in random order).
The instructor begins to auction off the sentence. The students should try to buy only the
correct sentences. The students bid and the instructor sells to the highest bidder. (This is
really fun!)
The instructor tells whether or not the sentence is correct.
IF the sentence is correct the team wins the amount which they bought if for. If it is incorrect
the team looses the amount which they bought it for. ANY team may win the lost money buy
stating the incorrect sentence correctly. (YOU WILL BE SHOCKED TO SEE EVEN THE
QUIET STUDENTS SCREAMING FOR YOUR ATTENTION).

IF the sentence is CORRECT and NO ONE bids on it, ALL TEAMS must pay a fine.
After all the sentences have been read the team with the most money wins!
The students seem to really enjoy this game!
Submitted by Trish in Japan

10. Prepositions Game

Level: Medium to Difficult
Prepare a text that contains prepositions. Take out the propositions and print them on a
separate sheet, then cut this sheet so that each preposition is on a piece of paper, then put all
of them in an envelope . Divide the class into groups and give each group an envelope. Tell
the students that you are going to read a text and whenever you raise your hand they should
bring a suitable preposition and put it on your desk and that the fastest team would get points.
Read the text with each groups' order and cancel a point for each mistake. Finally read the
text with correct prepositions. You can play this game with adj as well as a,the and an.
Submitted by: Luma Ashoo

Games, warmers
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11. Jeopardy
Based on the classic TV game show, this game will require your students to put on their
thinking caps. Divide your whiteboard into columns for vocabulary categories and rows with
different point values. Like this:

Divide your students into two teams. Each team chooses a category and the points they want
to play for: We choose Countries for 25 points. Supply a clue or definition: This country is
south of the US, and they eat tacos there. They must guess the right country in the form of a
question: What is Mexico? If they answer correctly you erase the points from the chart and
add them to the teams tally until theyre all wiped off. Adapt this game to any level of
difficulty and include as many categories as you wish.

12. Suction Cup Ball

Buy one (or several!) inexpensive suction cup balls, and your whiteboard games will never be
the same! These balls are made up of several tiny suction cups that stick to whiteboards.
There are many games you can play - as many as your imagination will allow- but here are
two:
- Draw a target with concentric circles on the whiteboard, each with a different point value.
Quiz students and if they give you the right answer they get to throw the ball for points.
- Fill your whiteboard with letters or syllables and each student has to supply a word that
starts with the letter or syllable they hit.

13. Pictionary

This is a classic and one that may easily be adapted to any level. Students are split into two
teams and they take turns drawing words, actions, or situations that they have drawn from a
pile of cards. Teammates guess what is being drawn.

14. Hangman

Another popular game that may be adapted to your needs. Play the classic game where
students have to guess a word, or a more sophisticated version where they have to guess
entire phrases, expressions, movie or book titles.

15. Tic Tac Toe

Too simple? Not really. Make it as challenging as you like. Say you want your students to
practice the simple past tense. Draw a 3 by 3 grid on the whiteboard. Write a sentence in each
square, with a gap where the verb should go. Write a list of 10 verbs on the side (one of them
won't be used). They must supply the right form of the verb to complete the sentence till one
of the teams gets a Tic Tac Toe. Try it with any gap-filling exercise! And expand the 9-square
grid to a bigger 16 or 25-square grid as suggested in this Tic Tac Toe worksheet.

16. Hot Seat

Place one student in the hot seat, in front of the whiteboard, with his or her back to it. You
and another student stand behind the student in the hot seat. Write a word, movie, or book
that the student must describe for the other to guess.

17. Earthquake
Draw a 5 by 5 grid on the whiteboard and label each column from A to E and each row 1 to 5.
Each team chooses a square, say A5; you ask a question you have previously prepared.
Before starting the game choose three squares that wont have any questions, and when a
team chooses one of these, tell them an earthquake has just swallowed up some of their
pointsdeduct 5 points.

18. Barnyard Dash

The goal is for students to identify a barnyard animal from the sound it makes. Depending on
your students level, you can either draw the pictures of animals on the board or write the
words for each. Give each team a different color marker and have them line up. Make the
sound yourself, i.e. crow like a rooster, or have a CD ready with animal sounds. As they hear
each sound, students race to the board and circle the right word or picture. You can adapt this
game to all types of sounds, like a phone ringing, a car honking a horn, or someone sneezing.
You may also record expressions or phrases that they have to circle on the board, like
Thanks! and You're welcome.

19. Writing Race

This game is similar to the race mentioned above but in this case students race to the board to
write a letter, a word, or a complete answer to a question. You can have each student write the
complete answer or play it like a relay race where each student in the team only writes one
word, then races to pass the marker to a teammate who must write the next one, and so on.

20. Backs to the Board

Great for practicing numbers, especially those tricky ones like 16 and 60, 13 and 30, etc
Write several numbers on the board. Give each team a different color marker. Have students
stand with their backs to board. Call out a number. Students turn, try to find the number and
circle it. At the end of the game, tally up the scores by counting the different color circles.

21. Short Reading Activities

With a reading passage, you can conduct this short reading race to give students some more
pronunciation, speaking, and even listening practice. Have students stand up and tell them
that each column of students is a team. For this activity the first student should read the first
sentence, the second student should read the next one, and students should continue reading
sentences until the entire passage is complete and then sit down. The first team to read all the
sentences and sit down wins. You can play again using the same passage starting with the
student in the back or make each row a team instead. To help students make their reading
sound more natural, introduce slash reading. To do slash reading, simply read the passage

aloud to the class pausing when it is natural to do so while students repeat after you and make
slashes or breaks in their text.

22. Short Writing Activities

Shiritori is a Japanese game that has been adapted for ESL classrooms. For this game make
each column of students a team and give them space on the board to write. You should write
one word on the board and a member from each team should rush to the board to write a
word that starts with the last letter of your word. The next team member then has to think of a
word that starts with the last letter of the word his team member wrote. Students continue
taking turns writing words on the board until you stop the game. It should be very fast paced.
You can stop when groups start running out of space to write and decide the winner based on
number of words or points. One point for 1-4 letter words and two points for 5 letters or more
seems to work well but words with spelling errors and duplicates do not count. Boggle is
another activity students can do in groups. Give each group a piece of scrap paper, draw a
boggle letter grid on the board, and have students find as many words as they can within the
time limit. You can create your own grids but be sure that there are enough word possibilities
for your students to find. Give students a scoring system, ask them to score their papers and
hand them in. In the next class you can announce the winning team and the best word.
Another popular favorite is Hangman (see a separate article about Hangman here) but it is
best to avoid the hanging imagery in the classroom so a scoring system would be better. You
can choose the sentences and have students work in groups, taking turns, to figure out the
answer.

23. Short Speaking Activities

Crisscross is a great warm up game. Ask students to stand up and start by asking a question,
the student who answers correctly can choose his row or column to sit down, continue by
asking another question. The game ends when everyone is sitting down. You can add a twist
if there are a lot of questions you want to review with the class. Have just the first row of
students stand up and when a student gives the correct answer, have him sit down and ask his
team member, the student sitting directly behind him, to stand up. For this activity teams
should be even or you will have to work in a way of making them even and you can draw this
activity out by keeping the teams neck and neck. Fruit Basket is another speaking game
where students sit in a circle with one less chair than participant. One student stands in the
middle of the circle and makes a sentence. After the sentence has been said everyone that the
sentence applies to must switch seats leaving another student in the center. Sentences such as
I am a student. are sure to get everyone moving. Chinese Whispers is another speaking
activity that can be done in the classroom. Think of some sentences to use, form teams, and
ask the first student in each column to come to the front of the classroom or into the hallway
to be given the sentence. The first team who writes a sentence on the board should receive
points but the most points should go to the team that has the sentence most similar to the
original.

24. Short Listening Activities

Bingo is a classic game that you can use not only in numbers lessons but also when talking
about letters or even words and phrases. If you have noticed that students struggle with the
pronunciation of numbers such as thirteen and thirty, you can have a short Bingo session
using only these numbers. Rather than make Bingo cards, have students fill in the grids
themselves. Karuta is another Japanese game. Have students sit in groups and spread
vocabulary cards face up on the desks. When you say a word aloud, the student who grabs the
correct card first gets to read it aloud and keep it. The student with the most cards at the end
of the game wins. This can help students with spelling, listening, and pronunciation.

25. Gallery Walk

Post several images throughout the room. Ask students to walk around the room, review each
image and make an inference based on the images. They should record their responses on
post-it notes as they walk around the room. After they have finished, assign one image per
student and ask to make a 20/40/60 second summary of the opinions on the pictures.