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Need help with ideas for games to teach language


Gertrude

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Background: I help lead a monthly study group for adults who've taken at least an intro class to the Czech language. Our organization offers 5 weeks of classes from native Czech speakers. It's mainly for the children, but there is an adult class once a week during that period divided into beginning and intermediate (5 classes total). So, as you can see, it's not really in-depth - more as an option for an intro, or basic travel phrases. Anyone who wants to learn more (and there are a few of us) mainly has to do it on their own time.

In our monthly meetings, we mostly review, maybe learn a small list of vocab, have speakers, etc. I've tried introducing verb conjugation and it's  ... ok. Not great. The adults who attend the class and reviews tend to be older and like the social aspect of it. Some want to learn, but they don't have the background of learning a second language and concepts like verb conjugation are new to them. I've got a handle on the ones who really want to and are capable of learning at a faster pace - we do our own thing.

What I'm having trouble with are ideas on how to introduce new material for everyone, especially the low end of the curve, and not make it boring. Some things that have been tried in the past are bingo with new vocab words, hangman, flashcards with pictures - all stuff that we've pulled from the kids' classes. This seems to work pretty well, actually. What I am looking for are ideas for more kinds of games like this. When I google I come up with a ton of computer games and apps, but I want something that will work in a group setting to get everyone engaged. Even something like holding up a flashcard with an image lets everyone think the answer to themselves before someone calls it out. I want to keep using things like Bingo, but I also don't want to overuse them. I want a good rotation.

Alright Hive Mind ... 3, 2, 1 GO!   (thanks in advance)

 

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Do some mock play acting of travel situations-

ordering food

hailing a cab

getting medical help

getting a room

buying clothes

getting movie or plane tix

All the above has to be done in Czech language, could prove practical experience.

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Thanks for those ideas, but we've tried practice conversations and even that is hard to get people to buy into. It feels like pulling teeth to get a minimum of effort or interest in applying what we're trying to teach. I'm not looking to really challenge people, I just want to have an activity where they can half check-out if they want, and easily slip back in if they are specifically called on. I don't want people to feel stupid for not following very closely or understanding entirely.

When I said the class trended to older folks, I think there are nearly half that are over 60 with many in their 70s and 80s. There is a sweet old man who loves to travel to Europe and ride the trains. He comes to class to trade stories with other people who've traveled and learning is secondary. I can see some of the younger ones (and I'm talking 40's as the younger ones) being fine with charades, but not everyone.

This is the frustration with this task. I don't want to overly challenge people because we have a w-i-d-e variety of skill and ability, but I do want it to do some good. About the most challenging we can push it is having new words they will be using made into a handout and have them answer with the appropriate word. Having them put those words into sentences is what we've been trying, and we're losing some of them.

Those that want to push themselves and think on their feet, we've got that covered. That is not what this specific session is for. What I am looking/hoping for are some ideas that would be more suited for a kid's class. I was even trying to think of wedding shower type games we could convert to class exercises. (word searches, scrambled words, etc)

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Looking around online, I remembered some of the games we used to do in secondary school learning a second language. Not sure how appropriate they all are for an adult group, but some of the better ones (with descriptions taken from online):

Board Race (requires whiteboard or something similar):

Split the class into two teams and give each team a colored marker.

If you have a very large class, it may be better to split the students into teams of 3 or 4.

Draw a line down the middle of the board and write a topic at the top.

The students must then write as many words as you require related to the topic in the form of a relay race.

Each team wins one point for each correct word. Any words that are unreadable or misspelled are not counted.

 

Actually I was going to list suggestions but this website seems to have a few good ideas so I'll just leave the link. The ones I found the best in school were the board race and sentence jumble. Obviously as teenagers the sense of competitiveness descended quite often into shrieks and hilarity, but the competitive element always drives people on.

Another one we did once we had a fairly good grounding in the language was "I went to the shops and I bought..." 

 

 

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Good thread. I recently started teaching a foreign language and the "games" we played up to now were:

I made two groups and gave each one a picture, they took turns describing their picture and asked about the other group's picture - whichever group found a difference got a point.

Everybody writes a question or half a sentence to a sheet of paper, papers get scrambled, everybody gets another piece and answers the question or finishes the sentence. The grammar point that they were supposed to learn this time was giving a cause of something (Question: Why did XY happen? Answer: XY happened because tralala), but it would probably be useful for other grammatical structures too, like if-clauses.

ETA: We also played a version of hangman with the beginner group, but that did not go so well. :P The vocabulary we could use was so limited at the beginning that only one or two letters were enough to guess the whole game. The students said it might make more sense to play it in the end of the course when they have more vocabulary to choose from!

I plan to have a short quiz in two groups some time too.

But giving them a real situation to play out in pairs is really the best and the most necessary thing, IMO. Even if they make mistakes, the point is to communicate in a foreign language.

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(Sorry for double post.)

Reading the list linked by Helena, I remembered a game we played at uni for learning vocabulary - it is similar to pictionary and mime from that list. I think the name is "taboo". There must be a bunch of cards with vocabulary and one person from a group must describe it to others. To make it more difficult, there are also a few words on each card you are not allowed to use*. The others from the group are guessing what the person is describing; each correct guess is one point. The time they have is limited, then somebody from the other group steps up and describes things for their group.

This is probably not useful for beginners, since it is quite demanding and requires quick thinking and some advanced vocabulary so you can describe things in an unorthodox way (because the obvious words to describe it will be taboos). But it is a good and active game.

*Example: Key word is "iceberg", forbidden words are "ice", "big" and "Titanic".

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We did play bingo to learn the numbers in English, I think. Songs are good as well. Roleplaying everday situations.

My brother had a Latin teacher who made a game out of rote memorizations by taking the time someone needed to recite a declension or so with a stopwatch and making little competitions. (It's probably not recommendable when pronunciation is important...)

But I am afraid that Czech is extremely challenging for someone who is not really dedicated and wants to spend a lot of time and effort. Both pronunciation as well as conjugations and declensions must be very hard for English native speakers (especially those who have not studied foreign languages before). (No, I don't know any Czech, but I studied Russian for about a year and was told the Czech grammar was even harder. And it took me almost a week in Prague to phonetically repeat what the voice in the Metro said (Like "Step back and close doors")

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Hey thanks for the ideas guys, it's got my juices flowing. I appreciate the help!

Pronunciation isn't hard once you learn the rules, but yeah, the declensions are not easy. For the purpose of this class, we have an understanding - we acknowledge they exist, but for the most part ignore them.:p We are shooting for being roughly understood rather than perfect speech. The actual teachers help when they are here, and we do study them in the intermediate session, but that's a small fraction of the time.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Yay, a topic about languages!

Thanks for everyone who shared their tips and ideas so far, I'll be sure to write them down as well. :)

I occasionally teach some survival Finnish to a small group of exchange students. Since we usually only have a maximum of 3 classes to use, the only thing you really can do is to present them with the most crucial vocab and phrases and help in memorising them.

So far my methods haven't been that diverse, I mainly use hand-outs and a whiteboard and the emphasis is on interactive learning, so I try to give them as much space to practice talking as possible. I ask them to do basic dialogue exercises together and try to occasionally give it a humorous twist so it's not all "Hi, my name is X, I come from place Y." For example, learning introductory phrases can be made more interesting by assigning the learners different roles so they can 'act' somebody else (i.e. a 20-year-old Italian guy pretending to be an 80-year-old lady from Finland). Depending on your humour and how creative you wanna go, this can be really funny. Of course you first want to make sure they learn the vocabulary that is relevant to them, but after that it's nice to change things a little to keep it interesting.

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I used to teach conversations in 4 parts.  Not saying it's any good but it worked for me:

  1. Introductory vocab game: Something like I packed my bag mentioned earlier, make a menu together for dinner or a brainstorm of basic vocab around a certain situation (booking a hotel room, ordering dinner, getting a taxi, getting public transport, getting directions - this will be the goal at the end of the lesson)
  2. Example conversation where you either show a video for them or act out as a native speaker the type of thing that might happen.  Give them a listening exercise like "what was ordered?" or "Where were they going?"
  3. Practice key sentences as either a "repeat after me" or by getting students to answer your question.  Correct as much as you think here.
  4. Set up a role play where they have a goal, eg. to order dinner for themselves and you.  If they are good, you can give the waiter a curve ball like no chicken in the kitchen or "there is an hour wait, is that ok?"  Students act out both parts.  As teacher take notes and give feedback at the end.  Let the mistakes go through this part until the end where you giver verbal and written feedback.
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11 hours ago, Aderyn said:

I occasionally teach some survival Finnish to a small group of exchange students. Since we usually only have a maximum of 3 classes to use, the only thing you really can do is to present them with the most crucial vocab and phrases and help in memorising them.

I definitely see your difficulty. Speaking as an ulkomaalainen, the thing I've noticed about Finnish is that (1) it has lots of rules, and (2) unlike English, it actually obeys those rules. Unfortunately, as a learner you need time to get your head around those rules. Three classes is just nasty.

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6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

My experiences with high school Spanish and German tell me that songs really get into your head easily. Much of what I still remember from those classes is in songs. Perhaps try a fill in the blank song game. Or an American Idol type contest.

Our language teacher at school used to sing pretty much everything at us. I say sing quite loosely, it was really just speech but in time to a sort of rhythm. It seemed silly at the time, but it was really quite effective. I can still recite the class greeting to the rhythm she used even now.

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  • 2 weeks later...

When I taught French, there was great confusion with over, under, beside, etc.

I took a 12 inch cube and cut holes in it and strung it to a line on the ceiling. They quickly learned beneath, under, inside, over, etc. And we would drag it out for review. 

Don't know it this is useful.

 

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