Sultan Zeydan's Blog

According to the communicative model of language teaching, we shouldn’t forget to optimize authentic practice for real-life communication situations. Here I want to share some activities that I presented in my last workshop. I believe that students always need such practices to enhance their  motivation and confidence to speak more voluntarily both  in and out of the class.

A fun ice-breaker activity

Suitable for all levels

No preparation

• Draw a picture reflecting an important scene of your life on the board.

• Tell the  students to ask you questions about tit.  (eg: Who is the man in the picture? How old is he? Where are you in this picture?) I enjoyed a lot while drawing the following picture depicting my last holiday in Croatia.

• After this demonstration, divide the class into pairs and ask them to draw an important scene of their life on a piece of paper (birthday, last holiday, family etc..)

• When they complete their drawings, they ask questions to each other about the picture in the given time interval.

• Each student shares what s/he has learned about his/her partner with the others in class

Headlines (L. Meddings & S. Thornbury, Teaching Unplugged, 2009)

Suitable for Intermediate +

No preparation

• As a demonstration, display a headline involving a shopping disaster or traffic accident, and invite the class to ask you questions to get the gist of your story.

• Then, tell the students to think of a story from their lives as in the demonstration, and write a headline for it on a piece of paper in large and legible script.

• Half the class stands in a large circle around the room, holding their headlines. The other half (the interviewers) form a second circle inside the first one. Everyone positions themselves opposite a student who is holding a headline. then, they ask some questions to get the synopsis of the stories.

• Call out “Change!” after a minute, and the interviewers move clockwise so as to read the next headline, and begin asking questions again. This process continues until all the interviewers have interacted with all the headlines.

Guess the word!

Suitable for all levels

• Divide the class into groups of four/ five and give vocabulary-card piles (at least 20 cards) to each group.

• Tell the students to draw four/five columns on a piece of paper and write the group members’ name onto each column.

• The first student chooses a card from the pile and tries to describe the word referring to parts of speech, antonyms, synonyms and necessary examples. When one of the group members is able to guess the word, both the explainer and the person who could guess the answer correctly get a point.

What’s in a Blot? 

Suitable for all levels

• The main aim of the activity is to foster the students’ creativity and assign a meaning to the blurred shapes prepared using the online tool “Splash Up”.

• Divide students into groups and give some blurred pictures to each group.

• Invite the students to interpret them using the target language:

        It reminds me of…                                                                 It looks like….

I get the impression of…                                                     It’s like ….

 

A snapshot from my workshop. Huge thanks to my participants!