Teaching Speaking Techniques (John Kay)

How to teach advantages and disadvantages- looking at both sides.

Asking students to look at both sides and then come to a conclusion is perhaps the most common kind of essay question in EFL, including in IELTS and Cambridge exams. It can also be a good structure for presentations and more informal extended speaking activities. In addition, for debates and discussions students can try to brainstorm both advantages and disadvantages in order to be able to pick a side, predict the other side’s arguments and/ or prepare counterarguments. A lesson on advantages and disadvantages can also be a good way of getting students to look at things from other points of view, something that is a vital intercultural communication skill. The structure of looking at pros and cons can also be a good way into the topic of supporting your arguments, looking at cause and effect, etc, and good practice of brainstorming in small groups. You can also use some of the practice activities below as a way of practising or presenting vocabulary.
Despite all these uses and how common it is to set the task of looking at both sides, very few EFL books have sections specifically on the language of advantages and disadvantages. This article will look at issues involved in having specific lessons on this point, then give presentation and practice activities, with most of the ideas adaptable for both speaking and writing classes.
What students need to know to explain both sides of an argument/ Typical students problems with giving advantages and disadvantages
The first thing students will need to be able to do is to understand what exactly they are being asked to do. For example, most students are unaware that “discuss” in a writing question means that they have to look at both sides of the issue. Others miss the “s” at the end of questions asking them to “Look at the advantageS and disadvantageS”, instead often giving a detailed justification of just one of each. There can also be times when students assume they have to look at both sides but could have got away with just looking at one side and might have been better off doing so, for example if the question simply asks “What do you think about…?”
After having made sure they understand the tasks, students will often need to be able to brainstorm at least three or four points on either side. If brainstorming will be done in groups of two or three students, it might be useful to give them phrases for this interaction like “Any more ideas?” and “I think that’s enough. Shall we choose the most important ones/ cross off the least important ones?”
Problems when explaining those positive and negative sides to other people tend to include overusing the same few words or expressions and using simple and rather information-free expressions like “One advantage is…” Other possible expressions that are worth teaching include “pros and cons”, “arguments for and against”, “good and bad points”, “positive and negative aspects”, “benefits and drawbacks”, “pluses and minuses”, “selling points”, “arguments in support” and “merit”. The last three have no obvious opposites (“demerit” only really being used to talk about school punishments). There are slight differences between those expressions in terms of formality, topics they are used with, and sometimes meaning. There are also other slightly different but still useful phrases like “positive consequence”.
Putting the expressions above into longer, more complex, more creative and more informative phrases can lead to expressions like “a comparatively minor drawback”, “by far the greatest selling point”, “the main argument in support”, “a great/ major/ big disadvantage”, “a possible/ potential minus”, “the overwhelming merit” and “a significant plus”, with some restrictions on which words collocate with which. These kinds of collocations are less common with “pros and cons”, as the two parts of that expression tend to stay quite close to each other, usually in the same sentence. “Pros and cons” also don’t have singular forms, “a con” being instead a fraud or an ex-prisoner, and “a pro” being a professional.
The distinction between “the” for “the only/ aforementioned/ greatest advantage” and “a” for “one of the…” is also often a difficulty for students, and a useful grammar point that is well worth bringing up as part of a lesson on advantages and disadvantages.
Students will also need more general phrases for continuing their arguments on one side or switching to the other side of the argument such as “Moreover”, “Furthermore”, “In addition” and “On the other hand”, “On the other side of the coin”, “Turning to the other side of the argument”, “We can balance against”, “As for…”, “Moving onto…”, “Looking at…”. Students can have problems distinguishing between these, e.g. that “whereas” is more general than “On the other hand”, that “but” is very informal at the start of a sentence, or that “On the contrary” actually means the last thing isn’t true (rather than just can be argued against). They can also have issues with telling the difference between these kinds of phrases and ones that show what the conclusion is coming such as “Despite all of this,…”, “Even though all that is true,…”, “Nevertheless” and “Nonetheless”.
At the conclusion stage students particularly have problems with not providing a clear link between the arguments on both sides that they have listed and the final conclusion, or with not having a clear conclusion at all. The latter is often a cultural difference, with totally sitting on the fence rarely being acceptable in the UK and US – if only because it makes reading or listening to both sides seem utterly pointless! Culture can also be a factor in “As we have seen, there are several advantages and disadvantages, but in my opinion it is a good idea”, but native speakers are certainly not immune to such logical jumps. As with English-speaking teenagers who create those kinds of essays, students will need to be taught to eliminate less important factors they have talked about, pick the most important, and/ or weigh up both sides, probably after briefly summarising what they have said. Given that students are in class to practise their language at least as much as sharing their actual opinions, they can help themselves with this by expressing the conclusion that comes naturally out of what they have written or said, even if that contradicts their opinion before they started writing or speaking.
There can also be issues with their first stage of their speaking or writing (mentioned at this point of this article because it should usually be the last part of an essay or presentation that they plan). I generally advise against students giving their conclusion away in their introduction, as it can make it seem like giving the ridiculous and annoying response “I definitely want to go for a picnic. There are both advantages and disadvantages to going on a picnic” when your friends asks “What shall we do on Sunday?” It can also make it difficult to put anything new or interesting in the conclusion. Longer academic writing might need some kind of abstract with a description of their conclusions, but they will still need to try to design that abstract to make people read further rather than to tell them all they need to know before they do so.
Classroom presentation of looking at both sides
My students are usually in the position I have mentioned above of often having been asked to look at both sides but never having been taught how to do so. I therefore tend to take a Test Teach Test/ Task-based Learning approach – asking them to do look at both sides of a debate, testing them on language they know or can think up to do so, then expanding their knowledge before asking them to do so again. The initial task can also be done with a list of suggested phrases for them to use, in which case they can also try to remember those at the next stage.
My usual way of testing and expanding what language they know or remember tends to be getting them to brainstorm words into the gapped phrases “A/ An _________________________ advantage” and “The ____________________ advantage”, plus the same for disadvantages. After then putting suggested words into the right gaps, they brainstorm other words meaning “advantage” and “disadvantage”, and match suggested words to those two meanings.
Stronger groups can also be thrown straight into these brainstorming and matching tasks before any speaking practice. There is also a way of getting straight to the phrases while demanding less of them than brainstorming, a game which I call The Longer Phrases Card Game. Students match beginnings and endings of shortish phrases like “Even though” + “that is true,…” or “There are” + “pros and cons”. Then, perhaps after brainstorming words which could go in the gaps between the two cards, they put other cards (e.g. “all” and “both” for these examples) in those gaps.
The TTT/ TBL approach described above means that most of the practice activities below can also be used in the first stage.
The other alternative is to get students guessing from language in context whether the phrases with these functions mean advantages, disadvantages, changing sides, sticking to the same side, or coming to a conclusion. This guessing from context is easier than with most other language points, as long as there are a few expressions in there with those functions that they already know or can easily guess such as “but” and “arguments against”. For example, the simple rule “expression meaning advantage” + “expression meaning and” leads to “expression meaning advantage” (plus the opposites with “disadvantage” and “but”) can help them guess most of the useful language without even needing to work out which side each specific argument in supporting - although that is also of course useful. Model answers for IELTS and similar exams for native speakers can provide lots of lovely examples with enough context to guess from, although you might want to edit the model texts in order to add even more useful phrases.
Classroom practice of looking at both sides
As mentioned above, getting students to prepare for a debate with another group is great practice of this language, particularly if you let groups choose which side of the debate they want to take after some thought on the topic, then ask them to predict the other side’s arguments and think of how to defeat them. The actual debate itself, however, is likely to lead to far less of the language of looking at both sides than you might like, given how one person or group will be mainly looking at one side.
Instead of a debate, you might want to set up the discussion as a kind of brainstorming competition, with students allowed to continue giving more ideas on the same side of the argument or the other side, as long as they use new phrases with every statement they make. This can also be played with cards that have phrases and/ or single words they must use (“Turning to…”, “also”, “despite”, etc), or functions that they must express differently to how has been done so far (“change sides”, “conclude”, etc). Students are allowed to discard cards if they use the phrases correctly, as long as those phrases haven’t been heard so far in the game. The person with the fewest cards remaining at the end is the winner. These cards can also be used with many of the other activities explained in this article.
A more amusing kind of coming up with arguments on both sides challenge is for students to mention things that they think only have one side and for their partner to see if they can come up with something on the other side of the coin, e.g. “Falling poverty only has advantages”. “That does seem to be the case, but in fact falling levels of poverty cause people to appreciate the little things in life less.” This activity can also be played for points, with one point for each argument they can come up with on the other side or each thing they can think of that no one can think of anything on their other side for.
A simpler version of this is for students to work in groups of three or four. One student chooses a topic that they think is overwhelmingly one-sided and argue that side, with all the other people in the group attempting to take the other side. The side which comes up with most arguments wins.
There are several activities which aim to improve their ability to link their arguments to their conclusions. One is for students to read or listen to someone looking at both sides of something and then predict their conclusion before they actually hear it.
Students can also be forced to use one of the phrases they have been given such as “Eliminating the two least important factors,…” and “As we have seen, there are more… than… and therefore…” to come to a conclusion at their end of their brainstorming and/ or discussion. They can then discuss if that conclusion makes sense and matches their own ideas. This is more fun if they phrases are chosen randomly in some way, e.g. taken from the top of a pack of cards face down on table or chosen by someone closing their eyes and pointing at a worksheet.
Partly in order to solve this problem of random conclusions, students can also work in turn to write pieces looking at both sides in a consequences/ chain writing kind of way. Each student writes an introduction to the essay, then passes that piece of paper to their right. They then write one side of the argument on the paper they have received, passing it two more times for the other side and the conclusion to be added. They then receive one more and see if the four parts of the essay match or not. The essays can all be on the same topic or different topics.
A more intensive way of making the point is to give students an essay as a Word document on a computer and ask them to change it as little as they can while making the opposite conclusion make sense. This could also be done with paper and pencil, as long as you give them the essay printed with a blank between each line to give them room to edit. They could also be asked to edit an essay down while leaving the same conclusion – the main point being made by doing so is that it should be difficult or impossible if the essay is well written.
There are enough common errors and confusions with this language point to be able to do a whole activity where students have to work out if expressions have the same or different meanings, or correct errors. The first can be played as a kind of game by getting them to lift “The same” or “Different” cards depending on what they think about the meanings of the expressions they hear, with more than two expressions being all the same or all different. For error correction, language to correct can be given as phrases or sentences, or as part of a whole text. If it’s a whole text, as well as mistakes with phrases, students could be given a text with bad paragraphing, no paragraphing, mixed formality, answers that don’t match the question, overlong justifications of single advantages or disadvantages, advantages or disadvantages stated with no support, etc.
Error correction can also be used at the presentation stage if you add less typical and/ or more common language errors to other useful phrases like “A additional advantage”, asking them to use the phrases in some speaking or writing once they have corrected them.

Fun classroom practice of collocations

I don’t think anyone could argue with the need to learn collocations such as “extremely (not fabulously) sorry”, “go (not do) jogging” and “a bird (not chicken) in the hand is worth two in the bush” at every stage of language learning. However, there are all kinds of theoretical and practical problems with actually using class time to help students learn such things.
Perhaps the biggest problem in class is that the activities which are usually put in textbooks (e.g. two rows of words which you must link with lines and multiple choice gapfills) are boring, uncommunicative and could just as easily be done at home alone. It is of course worth spending some lesson time on things students need to do outside class to really learn collocations, but sooner or later students are going to need some fun to keep them from giving up the rather daunting task of learning collocations. There also doesn’t seem to be any reason to drop our emphasis on communication only for this language point. This article gives a few suggestions on how to retain fun and genuine communication when tacking collocations. The games are roughly arranged to start with ones that practise collocations with simple pairs of words like “fail”/ “lose”. The article then moves onto collocations with larger groups of words, and ends with games suitable for dealing with collocations with potentially very large groups of words such as all dependent prepositions. However, most of the games can be used with all those three kinds of collocation.

Collocations with two words
Textbooks have been teaching things like “do”/ “make” (“do homework” but “make breakfast”), “have”/ “take” and “go”/ “play” sports since long before the word “collocations” made its way into the students’ book, perhaps because with these kinds of pairs there are loads of obvious games where students race to show their knowledge of which of the two it must be. The most fun of all is Stations, in which students race to touch one of two opposite walls depending on whether they think the word they heard goes with “do” or “make”, but this is only really suitable for young learners. Young learners can also throw things (e.g. screwed up paper, paper aeroplanes or sticky balls) at one of the two words on the board, raise different body parts to represent each word (e.g. foot up for “have” and elbow up for “take”), or pretending to shoot one for the two words on flashcards in different parts of the room. Adults can also join in by raising one hand for each word or raising cards with the two words (e.g. “make” and “do”) written on them.
You can also play matching games such as Snap and Pelmanism with paired up collocations, but these tend to work better with larger groups of words such as “do”, “play” and “go” for sports, dealt with below.
Collocations with three or four words
For collocations with three or four words like “have”/ “take”/ “get” and “go”/ “go to”/ “do”/ “play”, it is possible to give students more than two things to hold up, touch etc as described above, but it is generally better to get them matching expressions that take the same words, e.g. “your time” with “a while” because they both go with “take” (rather than “get” or “have”). The simplest activity is to give them cut up pieces of paper with the expressions without the three or four words they collate with, then ask them to work in groups to put them into columns. If they get stuck, you can give them a clue such as that all of the columns should be the same length.
I then often move onto playing the popular memory game pelmanism with the same pack of cards. Students spread the cards face down across the table and take turns trying to find pairs of cards that take the same word, e.g. “judo” and “aerobics” because they both take “do” rather than “play”, “go to” or “go”. Any pairs of cards that collate with different words must be placed back down in exactly the same place, making this a test of memory in two different ways. This version works better than the more common form of collocations pelmanism in which students should find the two parts of the collocation (e.g. they have to find the “do” card and the “judo” card) as it is closer to the original card game and takes less time to play.
The next stage for me is getting them to remember the collocations more quickly, as they will need to in real life. This can be practised with the matching game Snap. Students have a pack of cards each which they can’t look at. They take turns placing their top card face up on one of the two packs of cards on the table, racing to shout “Snap” if the two packs show matching cards at any point. The person who shouts “Snap” fastest when the cards match can take all the cards put on the table up to that point. Anyone who shouts “Snap” when they don’t match must pay some kind of penalty, e.g. giving two cards to the other player(s). The person with the most cards when the game stops (or the person with all the cards while their partner has none) wins.
Other games such as personalised sentence completion guessing games also work with this number of words, but are easier with the larger number of words dealt with below.
Collocations with a larger number of words
There are also examples of large lists of words students have to mentally choose from to find the right collocation, perhaps the most famous of which are dependent prepositions (good + at, depend + on, etc) and adverb collocations (highly + dependent, crucially + important, etc). It is these kinds of words which are invariably given in textbooks as two columns of words that must be joined up with lines, which is a shame when it is very easy to add communication to exactly that exercise. With young learners, you can put the two columns of words up on the board and get the whole class to shout out instructions for a blindfolded student so that they can draw lines to make the collocations. With adults and higher level young learners working in pairs you can simply give the left hand column to one student and the right hand column to the other and get them to match up “tall” and “story” without looking at each other’s worksheets. This works best if they also have halves of a complete sentence that they can use to check their match, e.g. “I think you are telling me a tall” plus “story. I know you don’t have a girlfriend, let alone two”. Similar games can be played as a mingle activity or a shouting dictation, although you will need individual slips of paper rather than worksheets for this.
Another possibility with the last suggestion above is to make the example sentences questions which they can ask each other after the matching exercise is finished, e.g. “Do any of your friends tell tall” plus “stories? Does that make them popular?” As with any list of vocabulary, students can also create their own discussion questions, stories or dialogues using the collocations.
A general vocabulary game that can work with collocations is the Definitions Game. Students are given collocations such as “have a picnic” and must explain what is written without using any of the words included in the collocation (e.g. “It means eat in an outdoor place. The verb has a similar meaning to take.”) until their partners guess exactly the words that are in the collocation. This game can be made more intensive practice by getting them to prepare cards to play Taboo, in which each collocation comes with three words that the person defining cannot say.
There is also a TEFL game that is most well known with exactly this language point, being dominoes. Cards are created with just collocations or whole sentences with collocations in them, split where the collocations occur. The rules of the game are exactly the same as real dominoes. Unlike the version given in many photocopiable TEFL books, this works best if each word collates with more than one other card, making it more like the original dominoes game. This can mean that the game finishes before all the cards are used, but they can simply play again and then maybe work together to link all the words together in a big circle.
The idea of cards which you put together by their collocations can also be used to make a kind of jigsaw. Take any text and split it where there are strong collocations, putting the different sections of the story onto different slips of paper, e.g. by pasting them section by section into a one-column table in a word processing program. Give each group of students one cut up text. The students try to reconstruct the text using meanings, collocations and their ideas of how the information might be organised, then you can test them on their memory of the collocations they saw.
Students can also use collocations to reconstruct texts in other ways. Write a text full of useful collocations (or rewrite a text to have more), then get the students to reconstruct it word by word. One way of doing this is a bit like Hangman but with each gap being a word rather than a letter. The second game is similar, but you give students the first word of the text and they try to guess the next word each time, with the real word being given after three wrong guesses.
You can also do another kind of jigsaw task, one that is more similar to actual jigsaws. Make a table with collocations split up and put into neighbouring boxes, e.g. the top left box says “have” and the next one says “breakfast”, then the box to the right of that has “take” with “a shower” in the fourth column. Cut up the finished table so that the collocations are all split up but all the cards are connected to at least one other next to, above or below it. This means that students can use the overall rectangular shape of the table and neighbouring words needing to both match up if to help them put together all the collocations – plus it is a lot more fun than just simple matching!
Another puzzle-style activity is a collocations maze. Make a table with collocations with the same word missing tracing a path through from the top left corner to the bottom right one. For example, you could have “He’s the ________ of my eye” in the top left corner, “An _____ a day keeps the doctor away” under it, “Adam’s ___________” to the right of that etc, until you reach the bottom right corner. The size of the table will depend on how many useful collocations with one word you can think of, and if that isn’t enough to make a decent-sized table you could also allow diagonal movements. All the other squares in the table should be filled with similar distractors, meaning phrases that can’t be filled with that one word but people might think you could like “Wow, your new girlfriend is a _________”. As with these examples, it is best if the words in the gaps are similar to each other, e.g. all simple verbs or all prepositions. Once you’ve filled the table with collocations and distractors, give it to students to try and trace a route across. You could then elicit the missing words from the other squares and/ or give them blank grids to make similar puzzles to test other groups.
A game that I’m pretty sure I made up (although I’m sure many other people have too) is something I call Collocations List Dictation. The students are given a list of words which have many collocations, with each word being given with at least seven examples of collocations they should know or at least understand, e.g. “hand – give me a hand, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, many hands make light work, etc”. A student reads out collocations with the key word missing until their partners guess what the missing word is.
A game that I came up with more recently but haven’t tried yet is Collocations Uno/ Collocations Blackjack. Students are dealt around ten cards with common words with lots of collocations such as “get”, “hand” and “in” each (some of the words can be repeated in the pack). They can look at their cards but shouldn’t show them to each other. The first student lays down any card and the next student should lay down a word that collocates with it. This continues round and round the group of three to five students until one person can’t go. That person takes three extra cards from the pack and lays down any one and the game continues in the same way. The person with least cards left when the teacher stops the game is the winner.
The students will need the help of the teacher or a dictionary to check their answers in many of the games above, e.g. Collocations Blackjack and Collocations Dominoes. There are also games specifically for prompting use of dictionaries. One is a version of the old TEFL classic Call My Bluff. Students are given a list of words and must write down a list of real collocations and wrong ones that they have made up (or perhaps directly translated from L1), all with their meanings. They read one set of real and false collocations and the other teams try to guess which are really used in English.
Another good source of collocations is obviously texts that they read. This can be made more fun by getting them to scan texts as quickly as possible for collocations, guess the story from the collocations and then read and check, try to remember the collocations and hence the whole text from it, etc.
Collocations are very difficult to personalise, but this can be done by giving them sentence stems that end with words which have many collocations, e.g. "I often have ___________", "My mother makes ______________ for me" and "I _________________ bed". Students can read out just the part that they have written for their partner to guess which sentence, or they can mix up their true sentences with false ones for the partner to work out which is which.

A good balance of stand-up and sit-down activities in a kids’ EFL class

The one overwhelming difference between teaching kids and teaching adults is that the younger the children are the more they need to move around in class, both to keep up their levels of concentration and to help them learn by getting physically involved. Teachers therefore need to know a stack of fun games where students mime, run, touch things etc. Once they have gained the ability to use such games, though, teachers often lose sight of the fact that the activities were developed not just because they were fun but mainly in order to help kids learn better. They might also lose sight of that fact that sometimes the best kind of learning can be done sitting down quietly just like adults. Here are some pointers to help you judge whether you have got the right balance of sit down and moving around activities in your classes, and then some tips on how to think about making changes.

Possible signs that you are using too many sit-down activities with kids

1. The children become more and more restless during the class
2. You have to discipline the kids more and more as the class goes on
3. The children become less and less receptive to new language as the class goes on
4. The amount of noise increases over the length of the class
5. The children become less and less responsive as the class goes on, e.g. stop responding to requests to copy movements (e.g. animal mimes or finger songs) while they are sitting down
6. There are more and more jokes and other silliness as the class goes on
7. The children starting overreacting to some of your cues, e.g. shouting extremely loudly during drilling
8. The main reason for discipline problems in your classes is the kids having too much energy
9. The only reaction you know to students getting restless is to discipline them more
10. The periods of attention and good behaviour after you discipline the kids or start a new activity become shorter and shorter as the class goes on
11. You have done songs, storybooks, flashcards and realia but no standing up or moving around the room
12. The only reason you don’t use stand up and move around action songs like Hokey Cokey or Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is that you are scared of losing control or wasting time as they get up out of their seats and into the right position
13. The only reason you don’t get students standing up and moving is that you don’t think there is room in the classroom
14. The only reason you don’t get students standing up and moving is that you are scared of disturbing neighbouring classes
15. The only reason you don’t get students standing up and moving is that the students could break something
16. When you do actions sitting down (e.g. bobbing up and down with two hands on your head for ears for “rabbit”), the children naturally move to stand up and do it but you usually stop them
17. There is no variation in energy levels in your lesson plan
18. There are two or even three quiet sit down activities in a row without something more lively and active to break them up
19. Most classes with under- tens pass without the students standing up and moving around
20. Most classes with under-sixes only have one standing up activity
21. The only standing up activity in every class is the warmer at the beginning of the lesson
22. You convert most standing up game ideas you read in the teachers’ book or in teaching magazines into sit down games
23. The only reason you reject a good game idea you find on the internet or in a teacher’s resource book is because it involves standing up and moving around
24. The more studious students win all the games and the more physically active ones never have a chance to win
25. The more physically active kids are learning much less than the more studious one
26. You have the same number of stand up and move around activities in your younger kids’ classes as in your older kids’ ones
27. The more physically active kids don’t like English class or say they are bored
28. The more physically active kids often get into trouble in your classes
29. You have difficulty making a clear transition between sit down activities
30. Students become overexcited every time there is a physical activity because they do them so rarely
31. You had problems the first time you used a stand up and move around activity and so you have never tried one again
32. Your students are looking longingly towards the wall of the neighbouring classroom, from where sounds of running around and other merriment are coming
33. Students go running out of the classroom shouting with a burst of pent up energy at the end of your class

Possible signs that you aren’t using enough sit-down activities with kids

1. The kids often do two or three stand up and move around activities in a row without a sit down activity between
2. You have tackled the same language point with several stand up and move around activities (over several classes or all in the same class) without trying a sit down activity on that point
3. You do so many more stand up than sit down games that you are running out of ideas for stand up games
4. Students who prefer more intellectual, mathematical, logical etc activities rarely win the games
5. Students who prefer more intellectual, mathematical, logical etc activities are progressing more slowly in English than in their other classes
6. Students who prefer more intellectual, mathematical, logical etc activities are progressing more slowly in English than the more physically active students
7. You reject some game ideas just because they are done sitting down or in silence
8. The kids often become overexcited
9. The kids often become physically tired
10. You have difficulty making a clear transition between two stand up and move around activities
11. You rarely use photocopiable activities
12. You rarely do craftwork (colouring, using scissors, gluing etc)
13. You rarely do project work (making posters, making picture dictionaries etc)
14. You are missing a chance to combine English development with development of other skills they need in school like learning to use scissors
15. The English classroom has far fewer posters and other student work on the walls than other classrooms because students aren’t producing them in your class
16. Students bring materials like picture dictionaries and colouring pencils to class but rarely have a chance to use them
17. Other teachers or students complain about the noise coming from your classroom
18. Other teachers complain that your students are tired or overexcited when they come to their next class
19. Students become very restless during tests because they are not used to sitting down and being still in English class
20. You have to interrupt your activities to let students cool down or drink water
21. Your students go into shock when they join Junior High School English classes next year and have to spend the whole class sitting down

Other possible signs that you haven’t got the balance of stand-up and sit-down activities right

1. Most classes are not a mix of the two
2. You don’t vary the number of each type of activity depending on the age of the students
3. You don’t vary the number of each type of activity depending on how physically tired or restless the students are on the day
4. You don’t vary the number of each type of activity depending on what the students have been doing before your class (e.g. sports or a sit down test)
5. You ignore pointers on how high energy games are when you read about them

Ways of making sure you use the right number of sit-down activities

1. Grade all your classes from the class that usually needs most stand up and move around activities to the class that would benefit most from and appreciate more sit down activities
2. Write an energy level next to each of the activities you have planned from your class from 10 points (running around and screaming) to 1 point (suitable for calming down overexcited or naughty kids). You can also try this with all activities you read in the teacher’s book and elsewhere.
3. Count up the number of sit down quiet activities and stand up moving around activities in your lesson plan and see if you think you have the right percentage of each for each class. You can also do the same thing for percentage of class time.
4. Check that the active stand up stages are scattered throughout the lesson, and are put in at places where students are likely to respond well to them.
5. Plan sit down and stand up variations of as many activities on your lesson plan as you can, so you can respond to their mood and energy levels on the day
6. Add other optional stand up and sit down activities to use only if the students don’t respond well to plan A due to energy levels etc.
7. Find out what classes students will have before and after yours and plan your lessons accordingly
8. Observe other people’s lessons or watch videos of lessons and judge them on the use of stand up and sit down activities
9. Brainstorm all the things that are stopping you using more stand up or sit down activities (e.g. lack of room to move around or students not using pencils well yet) and then brainstorm solutions to each one that does not involve abandoning sit down or stand up activities   

TEDx Talks. How to learn any language in six months | Chris Lonsdale

How to become a memory master

19 simple, fun and effective ESL board games

like the even more common teacher’s trick of putting things on little slips of paper, converting something into the format of a board game can be a great way of making it instantly more stimulating and fun, even if it isn’t quite Monopoly. Perhaps the two most common things that teachers put in the squares on the board are questions from language exercises (such as gaps to fill and errors to correct) and topics to speak about. Students usually move around the board by successfully doing what they are asked to in the square that they are presently on and/ or doing something with an element of chance such as rolling a dice. Other possibilities for adding luck that I have seen recommended and tried include flipping coins, spinning spinners with numbers on, and doing “janken” (rock paper scissors). 
As good as these basic TEFL board games I’ve described so far sound, I no longer use any of them. Those kinds of regular board game include at least one of these problems:

• The language activity and how you move around the board being completely separated from each other, with the latter often being down entirely to luck
  
• No need for the speaker to push their speaking performance
  
• No need for the people playing with them to pay attention to what they say
  
• Rather passive students
  
• A bit random, often including no clear language focus
  
• Quickly becoming repetitive
  
• So common that students have almost certainly done the same thing with previous teachers
  
• Not really a game (and certainly not the kind of board game that students would play by choice outside class)
  
• Too similar to other things you do in class, not really exploiting the strengths and peculiarities of board games
  

The variations below aim to deal with all these problems while adding more variety and fun. Most of the variations also need less equipment and preparation than some more complex variations, with only one game needing dice and no extra cards etc needed.
The main thing that I try to get rid of when making a new board game is the first of the problems mentioned above – the disconnect between the language activity and how students move around the board. Possibilities of bringing what they say and how they move together include, in approximate order of how simple they are to organise and explain:

1. Students moving the number of squares of the answer that they get when they ask someone who is in their group a question (e.g. three squares if their partner answers “I have three” to “How many cousins do you have?”)
   
2. Students moving the number of squares of the number of linguistically correct things that they say in the category given in the square that they are on (e.g. uncountable nouns which are “liquids” when they are on that square)
   
3. Students moving the number of squares of the number of linguistically correct things they can say in order in the category given in the square (e.g. expressions of certainty and uncertainty in order of how sure they mean someone is)
   
4. Students moving the number of squares of the number of factually and linguistically correct things that they say (e.g. making true sentences about their partner with Present Perfect and the verb in the square that they are on)
   
5. Students moving by the number of linguistically correct statements that they make which the other people in the team agree with (e.g. predictions about the future that everyone thinks are true)
   
6. Students moving by how long they can speak (e.g. one point for each thirty seconds that they can speak, up to six points for speaking for three minutes, with points off for things like silent pausing)
   
7. Students moving by a ranking by the other people in the team of how well they did something (e.g. from five squares for perfect communication down to one square for barely achieving their aim in a roleplay in the situation given in the square)
   
8. Students moving by the number of criteria which their speaking matches (e.g. one point for few pauses, one point for using language that the class have studied, etc, up to maybe six criteria)
   
9. Students moving by the number of words or phrases on an accompanying worksheet that they can use while they are speaking (with the other people in the group looking at the worksheet and ticking them off, perhaps with the person speaking being able to see hints such as names of functions or key words)
   
10. Students moving by the number of phrases they can use that have the functions given on the side of the board game (as long as no one else has used the same phrases during the game)
    
11. Students moving by the number that they get on the dice, but only if they can overcome the challenge that one of the other people in the group have given to that number (e.g. for the square “In the post office” their partners decide that “Six equals you don’t have any foreign currency and five equals you don’t know exact address you are posting it to” with the other numbers being “No problem”)
    
12. Students moving by the number of levels of formality/ politeness that they can come up with beyond what is in the square (e.g. moving four squares for coming up with “just a mo’”, “Just a moment”, “Just a moment, please” and “Can you give me just a moment, please?” in response to a square saying “Please wait”)
    
13. Students moving by the number of longer and longer phrases they can come up with (e.g. “It’s a long ruler”, “It’s a long clear ruler”, “It’s a long clear 30cm ruler” etc, with the adjectives in the right order)
    
14. Students moving round square by square with only one counter for the whole group, with something else such as who has which role being decided by their speaking performances etc
    
15. Students moving by the number of times that they can obtain the response that is written in the square from the other people in the group (such as “Yes, I did” for one square, “I don’t remember” for another square, “That’s a bit personal” for another, and “I envy you” for another)
    
16. Students moving by the number of a single kind of response (for the whole game) that they can get from other people in the group by asking questions on the topic in the squares (e.g. squares that say “toys” and “kindergarten” for a game which is meant to practise versions of “I don’t remember”)
    
17. Students moving by the number of questions that they can answer or reject for being off topic or already answered after speaking about the topic in the square (with points also for their partners running out of questions)
    
18. Students moving by the number of lines that there are in a dialogue which they take part in (with the other people taking part in the roleplay trying to keep the conversation as short as possible by politely making their excuses etc)
    
19. Students trying the challenges on as many squares after the one that they are on as they like, but going back to their original square if they mess anything up before they settle on a new square and let play pass to the next person
    

All of these variations are looked at in more detail below.
For the ones where students try to come up with as many correct examples of the thing in the square as possible to get points and so be able to move that many squares (like most of the games above), there are several possible policies on wrong answers:

• Students can continue to attempt the challenge in the square until they make a mistake, with the number of points (and so number of squares that they move) the number of correct answers that they had said before they messed up. For example, if their fourth attempt at doing what the square which they are on asks them to is wrong, they move three squares. If their first attempt is wrong, play passes straight to the next person and they have to try the same square again when play comes back to them. If the tasks are quite easy, you might want to set a maximum number of points per square, e.g. students stopping when they get to six correct attempts, even if they haven’t made a mistake.
  
• Students continue trying to do what the square tells them to until they aren’t sure about their next attempt. They then move the number of squares of their (correct) attempts before that point. If they have misplaced confidence in their next answer and so make a mistake, their points go back down to zero and they have to try again from the same square the next time that it is their turn. Progress will obviously be much slower this way, both in terms of number of squares moved and thinking time.
  
• Students are allowed a certain number of attempts (e.g. six) and get one point for each correct attempt out of that number, with no particular punishment for making mistakes early on. This should make progress round the board quicker than the two versions above.
  
• Students have a fixed time limit to make attempts and get one point for each correct answer in that time. This can be combined with stopping when they make a mistake or stopping and losing all your points when you make a mistake as just described above.
  

You could also tell students to stop their turn if they can’t come up with another idea and/ or are silent for more than a certain time limit, e.g. 20 seconds.
1. Moving the number of squares of the answer they get
This can be played with a whole board game for just “have”/ “have got” or “there is/ there are”, perhaps including things in the classroom with questions like “How many tables are there in this room?”
Students could also use Present Simple (“How many sausages do you eat?”), “can” (“How many times can you head a ball?”), Present Perfect (“How many times have you…?”), or Past Simple (“How many… did you yesterday?” or “How many years ago did you last…?”), although this would probably be for a freer/ more mixed game as it would be a struggle to make up a whole game from just one of these structures.
This game doesn’t necessarily have to have anything written in the squares, or you could put in pictures and/ or words to tell them what kinds of categories to ask about such as toys, media, furniture, family, cutlery, crockery, and clothes. You could also include categories of language or phrases mentioned such as “can” and “Present Perfect”.
You have to design the game very carefully to make sure that students don’t get answers like “300” and have to count round and round the board, or you could just set a maximum number of 10 at how many squares they can move. To make them think more carefully about their questions, you could also say that any answer over 10 means that they actually can’t move that turn and have to wait for the next one.
2. Moving the number of squares of the linguistically correct things they say in the category given
This can be used with so many language points, e.g. examples of particular categories of countable and/ or uncountable nouns (“liquids”, “abstract nouns”, etc), particular kinds of comparative adjectives (“ending with –ier”, “positive”, “four syllables” etc), Past Simple verbs (“with –ed pronounced /t/”, “irregular with the vowel pronounced ‘or’”, “three syllables” etc), and words with a particular spelling and/ or pronunciation. For a few of those language points you could make a whole board game for one language point, e.g. by putting a different phoneme or a different category of uncountable noun in each square. However, this generally works best as a revision board game, with different things from the course which you want them to remember in each square. I often use this version in the penultimate lesson of a course, before an end of term test.
3. Moving the number of squares of the linguistically correct things they say in order in the category given
This is basically the same as the game above, but students must also get the things that they say in the right order. This works for anything that you can rank the meaning of, e.g. phrases explaining how similar and different things are like “very different” and “slightly different”, phrases explaining how often something happens like “very rarely”, phrases explaining (approximately) how many or much something is like “a couple”, phrases explaining how sure you are like “fairly likely” and phrases explaining positive and negative feelings like “absolutely disgusting”, “a bit irritating” or “can’t stand”. For enough squares to make a whole board game, you’ll need to repeat squares and/ or have students doing the same thing backwards sometimes, e.g. going down from “always”. You can also have a mix of some squares with words that they should go up or down from and some squares with just descriptions of the kinds of language they need to come up with in order (e.g. “adverbs of frequency”). You could also have whole sentences that they should make more and more sure, make about more and more people, etc.
The levels of politeness game below is a version of this.
4. Moving the number of squares of the factually and linguistically correct things they say
This is perhaps the most flexible of all the games in this article, being possible with just about any language point and again being great for a review game at the end of term. If possible, it’s best to add some personalisation by telling them to make most or all of the statements things which are true about the other people in their group such as “You have never been to Iceland” and “You detest heavy metal”.
Some of the many possible points to practise with this game include (with suggestions of what to put in the squares in brackets):

• Present Perfect (topics such as “work” and times such as “this year”)
  
• Likes and dislikes (words to use such as “adore” and topics such as “food”)
  
• Second Conditional (words to use and topics such as “lottery”)
  
• Simple Past (times such as “the day before yesterday” and “last”, and topics such as “daily routine”)
  
• Present Simple (adverbs of frequency, other frequency expressions, verbs and topics)
  
• Comparative and superlative (things to compare to the other people in their group or their possessions, topics, and adjectives to use)
  

5. Moving by the number of linguistically correct statements that the other people in the team agree with
This is a variation on the game above which allows students to make statements about other topics such as comparisons (comparisons between the thing written in the square such as “this town” and other things), adjectives (describing things and people in the squares that they all know), recommendations, (strong and weak positive and negative) opinions, and Third Conditional (about the historical topics in the squares like “inventions” and/ or decisions in their own lives like “different study after high school”). In each case, their partner must agree with their opinion for them to get a point. Note that this doesn’t work with very competitive groups as they will just disagree with everything that the other people say in order to stop them winning (whatever their real opinion).
6. Moving by how long they speak
This is another very flexible game which I often use for revision by adding topics from the course book like “a holiday” and “my health recommendations” to the squares on the board. This can also be good preparation for giving presentations in English, as well as more informal extended speaking – for exams such as FCE Speaking Part Two and IELTS Speaking Part Two, but also as a vital skill for higher level students.
7. Moving by a ranking by the other people in the team of how well they did
This is another one which is good for revision, especially as you can include roleplays such as “In the post office” and “Respond to a complaint”. You can also do telephoning and emailing roleplays, in the latter case with them saying what they would include in such an email (word for word) and their partners doing the same for the original email which that person has to deal with and/ or the response after they send the email that they come up with. Business English students could also roleplay meetings for particular challenges such as “Negotiate a pay rise” and “Explain to your boss why you haven’t finished your project yet”.
8. Moving by the number of criteria which their speaking matches
This can be used for any of the uses of the game just above, and this variation is usually better than that game as this one makes students think more about what successful communication in English is. Possible criteria include “achieved what the square asked you to do”, “smooth communication”, “friendly”, “good stress and intonation”, “good active listening”, “polite”, “few pauses”, “fluent”, “language that you have studied in class”, “few mistakes”, “high level language”, “speaking for a long time” and “avoiding repetition”. You could also let students decide what the criteria will be, maybe changing it (a little) for each square.
9. Moving by the number of words or phrases on a worksheet that they can use while they are speaking
Students roleplay the situation of the square that they are on now while the other people in the group look at a list of useful words and phrases for that situation, probably ones that have already been studied in class. The students who are listening tick off anything they hear and when the person whose turn it is has finished speaking they can move one square for each one that was ticked. Those phrases stay crossed off, meaning other people must use different ones when it comes to their turn. The person speaking can’t look at the list, but they will be able to see it when it is other people’s turns, giving them a chance to memorise them somewhat at that time.
This works best if the words and phrases are divided by function, e.g. “apologise” and “give reasons” as the categories for a board game with lots of different situations for dealing with complaints in the different squares, in which case the key words etc that they must use can be things like “afraid” and “due to”.
10. Moving by the number of new phrases they can use that have the functions given on the side of the board game
This is the same as the divided by functions version of the game just above, but with an extra blank space with each category of language that they are asked to use. As well as ticking the phrases that the person speaking uses, students can also give them a tick in the blank space for each other suitable phrase with that function they use that hadn’t been used before. This means that the person who is speaking doesn’t have to use exactly the words and phrases which are on the suggested phrases list as long as they say something original and with the right function.
The functions that you give will need to be ones which can be used with almost every square, e.g. “checking/ clarifying”, “starting conversations” and “thanking”. I mainly use this game with exam preparation classes, e.g. typical topics for FCE Speaking Part One in the squares and typical interactional language that can come up in the exam like “vague answers” and “commenting on your partner’s answer” as they categories that they should come up with as they are speaking. It can also be used for business meetings/ negotiations, as long as you push them to keep each meeting very short.
11. Moving by the number on the dice, but only if they can overcome the challenge given to that number
When it is someone’s go, the other people in the group try to think of a challenge for each number on the dice connected to what is written in the square that they are presently on. For example, if they are on the “telephoning” square, their partners can decide that “Six means that you can’t contact the person you want to speak to” and “Five means that you have a bad line”. If they run out of ideas, the other numbers on the dice have no problem attached to them. As the other students want to stop their partner going too far, it’s best for them to give the challenges to the highest numbers on the dice, leaving low numbers like one as “no problem”.
The person whose turn it is then throws the dice and roleplays the situation, including the problem if they get one of those numbers. If they find some way of having a successful outcome, they can move the number that was on the dice, with the new square being what they will have to do next time.
This game works for all kinds of situations and functions.
12. Moving by the number of levels of formality/ politeness that they can come up with
Students must make more and more polite versions of the basic or rude phrases that are written in the squares like “Please write back soon” and “No idea”, getting one point for each additional level of politeness that they can come up with (in order). You will need a mix of functions to fill a whole board game, but you can make them all connected to one situation such as emailing (with squares for opening, requesting, etc), telephoning, giving presentations and business meetings. As well as sentences to improve on, students can also just be given just the name of the function that they should try many levels of formality for (e.g. “apologising”).
13. Students moving by the number of longer and longer phrases they can come up with
If it will be difficult for students to judge whether the sentences which someone is coming up with are really getting more and more polite as in the game just above, it might be easier for them to come up with longer and longer correct sentences (which are also usually more polite). This game can also be used for longer and longer descriptions, or longer and therefore more specific and higher level functional language phrases (“bigger”, “a lot bigger”, “quite a lot bigger” etc).
14. Moving round square by square with only one counter for the whole group
In this game there is no skipping squares/ jumping ahead, so there must be another reward for doing well. Students who do well could give someone else the more difficult role in the situation on the next square, sit out the next round, make problems to be solved, choose the criteria for doing well, etc. Doing well could be defined as doing better than the other people taking part or other ideas from above such as meeting criteria or using phrases on a worksheet.
15. Moving by the number of times they can get the response that is written in the square from the other people in the group
This is another one for which is quite difficult but just about possible to make a whole board for one language point. Possibilities include all the short answers (“Yes, I did”, “No I haven’t” etc in the different squares), typical short social responses (“That’s a shame”, “I don’t believe it” etc in the different squares), names of different people and relationships (with questions like “Who do you…?” and “Who… you?”) and frequency expressions (“Once every two weeks”, “Often” etc, with “How often do you…?” questions).
16. Moving by the number of a single kind of response they get by asking questions on the topic in the squares
This is similar to the game just above but with the responses for all the boxes being basically the same (although different phrases meaning the same thing should obviously be encouraged). Possibilities for what they have to get their partners to say include versions of “I don’t remember” (with topics like “primary school” and “celebrations”), versions of one level of agreement or disagreement (e.g. variations on “I totally agree”), phrases for accepting advice, and phrases for turning down requests.
To make sure that the language which you are focussing on gets some practice, you’ll need to ask students to use a different phrase each time they respond, being able to repeat only when it becomes the next person’s turn. Note that unlike most of the games in this article, this rather unusually makes it as much of a challenge for the people waiting as it does for the person whose counter is on the square.
17. Moving by the number of questions that they can answer or reject for being off topic or answered already
This more complex version of an extended speaking game is for students who might not really listen when their partners are speaking or for students who need to practise dealing with questions (e.g. Q&A sessions in real presentations). Students try to say as much as they possibly can about a topic while they are speaking, then their partner(s) must ask (say) six questions. The person who spoke gets points for successfully answering questions, but also for any questions that their partner(s) can’t come up with (e.g. two points if their partners only come up with four questions) and any questions that they can reject (e.g. for being off topic or already answered when they were originally speaking on the topic). You’ll need to decide if answers such as “I’m afraid I didn’t research that but I’ll check and email you tomorrow” count as a successful answer or not. You could also give points to the other people in the group for asking questions that other people can’t answer.
18. Moving by the number of lines in a dialogue that they take part in
This is useful for politely and smoothly ending conversations, although actually it is the people who are waiting for their turn who mainly use that language. The squares on the board can have topics of conversation or (probably) situations in which you might meet someone such as “the lift” and “a conference”. It’s probably best to have groups of at least three people so someone can count the number of exchanges in the conversation while the two people speaking try to extend the conversation (the person whose turn it is) or quickly but politely end it (the other person).
19. Students trying the challenges on as many squares after the one that they are on as they like
This means that, unlike most of the games here, students only need one correct answer for each square. Even more than the games above, for this game to work it must be obvious if a student has successfully managed to do the thing on each square. Possibilities include difficult roleplays (“negotiate a pay rise” etc), a certain number of correct things to brainstorm (“six uncountable nouns in this classroom” etc) or single things to come up with (“A food that your partner can’t stand” etc). If their partners decide any of those are not successful, the person whose turn it is goes back to the square which they started that turn on.
Creating your own board games
It is incredibly easy to make your own simple board games such as those described in this article with just any ordinary word-processing program. Make a normal table like you would if you were making cards or a substitution table, maybe one with five columns and ten or so rows. Combine (= merge) the middle boxes of the table to make one big space in the middle, leaving just a rectangle of boxes round the outside that will be the squares that students will put their counters on and move around. In Microsoft Word merging boxes in a table can be done by simply holding down the left button on your mouse while you drag the cursor over the boxes that you want to merge, right clicking on those highlighted boxes, then pressing “M” for “merge”.
Write “START” in one of the remaining squares, e.g. the top right one. You can then add a circular ClipArt image to the middle space to show students which way to move, or some straight arrows to some of the boxes round the edge with the same purpose. Then add words and/ or ClipArt images to the remaining boxes around the outside of the table as you would to any other table.
You’ll need to decide which of the games you are going to play above, and how wrong guesses are treated. You’ll also need to decide on how the game will end. Possibilities include:

• The first person to pass the START square again after one complete rotation of the board wins
  
• Students continue going round and round the board until you tell them to stop, with the person who has progressed furthest at that point the winner
  
• Students play for a fixed amount of time, with the person who has progressed furthest at that point being the winner
  
• Don’t tell students which of those systems you are planning to use, only deciding when you see how useful the game is and how your timing is going