Esl speaking games for young learners

Keeping your class interactive ensures that students are engaged in the lesson. Here a few ways to achieve this:. Check out these 11 fun TEFL speaking activities to get your students talking. Incorporating ESL activities and games into your classroom is a great way to help students learn. Here are a few reasons why using games to teach English is a good idea.

Find out more about creating materials for the ESL classroom. Young children can be enthusiastic and active learners. Here are some ESL games for kids that are fun and engaging yet not too complex for young learners. In this memory game, the teacher puts about target vocabulary words on the board. This can be done by taping flashcards to the board or simply by writing the words or drawing pictures. The students line up in front of the board and are given about a minute to try to memorize all the vocabulary words they see.

If you use flashcards, you can hand the student the card as an easy way to keep score. Try these last-minute ESL lesson plans that can be adapted for any class. This is another fun game for practicing vocabulary. Brainstorm with your students to come up with a list of categories maybe from new vocabulary you have recently taught , and write each category on a flashcard.

Examples could be colors, jobs, or verbs. Choose two students to stand up. The first student to come up with something from within that category that begins with the letter is the winner and remains standing.

Chose another student to go against the winner, and repeat with a new category and letter. For your call sheet, you can use the usual numbers and letters or get more creative with vocabulary you have recently taught. For very young students, use pictures instead of words.

Cut out the call sheet and put the squares into a hat. Give each student a bingo card as well as something to mark their card with. The other students listen for what is called and mark the called word or image on their card. What is task-based learning? Find out about this popular teaching method! Check out this post which is one of the most popular of all time. Young learners are naturally inclined to creative lessons.

Activities are designed to help students achieve a lesson goal. Rather than the teacher merely instructing students, activities require group participation. The outcome of every activity should result in students reinforcing their speaking skills and learning something new.

There are so many great activities that can help young learners practically use their English. These activities will enable them to speak the language confidently and prepare them for using it in the real world.

Role-play is the quintessential ESL activity. This activity requires students to either pretend to be someone or imagine a particular situation. Teachers can set up a role-play activity that mimics a real-life scenario, such as ordering from the supermarket or traveling in a foreign country.

Role-plays are great because it is the closest thing to using English outside the classroom. Students will experience using the language to converse with others without the anxiety of making mistakes since you are there to guide them. Role-play gives students a chance to be creative and imaginative with their English, allowing personal growth in the language. Engaging with other students also creates a positive dynamic in the classroom.

By creating an engaging, intellectually-stimulating simulation, students will be motivated to speak confidently. They will retain all the material taught in the study phase of the lesson. Pictionary is a great activity to practice vocabulary. All you need is a whiteboard, a marker, and a list of words. This activity is fun, exciting, competitive, and engaging. Everyone has a turn at drawing, showing off some outstanding drawing skills! Bingo is an old game that works so well in an ESL classroom.

Word Bingo is an excellent activity for reading and listening skills. It will require students to focus on the activity. Students will be given bingo sheets with English words written on them.

The teacher will say the words that come out of a hat and the first student to complete a bingo pattern wins! Music is an essential part of living language. Young learners love to sing, so using songs is a great way for students to use their voice and learn the rhythm of the English language. The best way to conduct a singing session would be to have all students standing.

You should develop movements to go along with the song to keep your young learners engaged and activated! Some of their best hits are:. Hot potato is a fast-paced, vocabulary revision activity that will keep students engaged, excited, and focused. This activity is best suited for smaller classes. A more relaxed version of Hot Potato would be to have pictures instead of words on the flashcards. Students will try to guess the word related to the image.

Advanced versions of the game may include having two hot potatoes. Students who have the potatoes when the music stops ask each other questions in English. Surveys are a great way to lead the activate-phase of a lesson. Surveys will enable students to practice the four core skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

An example of a great way to utilize surveys is during an ESL class about personal experiences. Once the survey is complete, have each student introduce the person next to them with their fact. This exercise allows the students to get to know each other better. It also encourages students to talk in English more and creates a more engaging classroom environment. Simon Says is a quick activity that focuses on students listening skills. The person who is saying the instructions will try to trick students by talking faster.

Then let each group debate their topic in front of the class. One party starts voicing their first argument, then the other answers. The debate is over after a set time — for example 5 minutes — or when the parties stated all their arguments. Make sure to prepare topics according to the fluency level of your students. The topics can be rather serious and controversial, or fun and weird. Finally, and absolute classic activity. Split your students into groups, each with at least 3 three students.

Prepare a list of words. For each word, think about words which can be used to describe the original word. These can be synonyms, adjectives or any kind of related terms. Now, one student has to take one card and explain the word to the other in their group. He must not use gestures, facial expressions or voices. He has to circumscribe the word using other verbal expressions.

The rest of the group have to guess the word. Set a time for each round, like one minute. One group has to guess as many words as possible within that time; each guess is one point. When the explaining student uses one of the taboo words or other taboo means , he has to skip the current word and continue with the next card.

Count the points after each round. Then, the next group has its turn. The game is over, when each student in each group had their turn to explain words. Sum up the points; the group with the most wins. Other possible game modes: Let the groups guess one word alternating, and set a 30 seconds time limit for each guess. Or let a student explain a word to the whole class, and who guesses it first, gets a point. Great… These activities are really interesting ones and are helping me a lot.

Thank You So Much for Uploading…. Your email address will not be published. Join our mailing list to receive a free ESL teaching resource every week. Click to Join. Table Of Contents. Interview Pop 2. Word Racing 3.

Guess Who or What I Am 4. Would you rather… 5. How-to Presentation 6. Living Memory 7. Video Talk 8. Talk About Your Weekend 9. Timed Discussion