Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Find Someone Who...

This is the fourth in a series of smartphone games and activities for the ESL classroom. 

This is the classic icebreaking activity where students get to know about each other by asking simple questions. The smartphone version gives the student a randomised list of five characteristics, such as 'Find someone who goes to bed late', and the student has to match a name to each characteristic.

This activity is good for icebreaking or practising asking simple questions. You could turn it into a competition by stating that the first person to get five names is the winner.



Saturday, June 20, 2015

Job Interviews

This is the third in a series of smartphone games for the ESL classroom. 

In this activity, students log in to the activity page on their phones and have a list of interview questions to ask each other.

There is a basic version, for general ESL classes. In this version, each students gets a job which they will interview their partner for, and a list of questions. There are 10 different jobs in total.

Student A: roadtogrammar.com/rp/3a
Student B: roadtogrammar.com/rp/3b

In the advanced version, for Business English classes, the questions are more general, but more realistic. The students rate their partner's answers, confidence and body language, leading to a score out of 100.

URL: roadtogrammar.com/rp/4




Saturday, June 13, 2015

Smartphone Monster Drawing Game

This is the second in a series of smartphone games for the ESL classroom. 

In this game, the students see a picture of a monster on their screen, and they describe it to their partner, who draws it. The student giving the description should not look at the drawing. The goal is to get as close to the original picture as possible.

This game will allow students to practise giving descriptions. The monsters have hats and moustaches and things, so there will be some vocabulary practice too. The monsters are brightly colored, so you could use this activity with smaller kids and get them to color in their pictures.

The links are:

Student A (set 1 of five monsters): www.roadtogrammar.com/rp/2a

Student B (set 2 of five monsters): www.roadtogrammar.com/rp/2b


Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Smartphone Animal Guessing Game

Teachers, here is a game that you can get your ESL students to play in pairs in class with their smartphones. 

Student A goes to this page: roadtogrammar.com/rp/1a 
Student B goes to this page: roadtogrammar.com/rp/1b 

They will be shown a picture of an animal which their partner must guess by asking YES/NO questions. They also have to guess their partner's animal.The one who takes the least amount of guesses wins. They can then click the picture to get a new animal and play again.  
Screenshot:


Video: Guess the Vocab

Here's another video that I've put on YouTube, in a new format. The video features 10 vocabulary items. First, you hear (and see) an...