How to teach your pupils to spea

How to teach your pupils to speak English twice as fast...
by Orlando Odtujan

Here are some of the problems many teachers have:

Some of your children may not enjoy being in class
You may find it hard to have all your children pay attention
Your class may not repeat things back to you enthusiastically
Some of your class may not be motivated to learn
Your pupils may not get much chance to practise speaking English during class
We need repetition to learn, and to make things stick, but how do you make this interesting?
You may not have time to revise all the vocabulary, themes and grammar that you have covered as if you spend time revising you fall behind in the coursework
You may feel some of your pupils getting restless during class time, and losing their focus
You may lack time to put that extra boost into your classes having a lot of paperwork, report writing and marking to do

Here is how these ideas for teaching English games address these problems:

Games make learning fun so your class and children are willing participants and not just there because they have to be.

Students pay more attention because they are enjoying themselves, so they do better, they feel better about themselves, and do EVEN better – it is a vicious circle working in your favour.

Playing a game has a purpose to it, an outcome, and in order to play students have to say things – they have a reason to communicate rather than just repeat things back mindlessly. Therefore they want to know and learn more.

Games stimulate and motivate children to new levels. If they do not pay attention during the presentation of new language, and make a mental effort to memorise it, they will not be able to play the games well, and they will let their team and themselves down, so they make more effort to join in and learn as much as possible.

Students get to use the language all the time during the games

They involve a lot of repetition, and repetition is the mother of skill, it can be BORING, but thanks to these games it is FUN. How do you expect your class or children to remember vocabulary if they never use it? Repetition is the mother of skill.

The games lend themselves perfectly to quick bursts of revision. Using some of the games you can revise a massive amount of vocabulary and grammar in a few minutes. If you use games to revise two or three topics every lesson, as well as teach the new language, imagine how well your kids will do at exam time, and how proud you will feel.

The physical movement involved in some of the games also helps keep everyone stimulated and focused. Children naturally have a lot of energy and are not good at sitting for long periods so if you throw in a game with movement from time to time you will prevent them from getting restless and bored.

Children have a short attention span (even more so these days with the style and pace of the media, and computer games), so injecting lively varied games into your classes to practise the language you are teaching will keep your children alert and enjoying themselves.

The philosophy of encouragement incorporated into these games allows all students, including the less good ones, to gain in confidence. Usually this doesn't just mean they get better at your subject, but in all subjects. This makes everybody, including you, more motivated and optimistic, and you can really make a difference by helping your pupils have more self-esteem so they succeed in all areas of life.

There are literally hundred of ways of adapting the games so you can cater for a broad age range (suggested range: age 4 to 12). This gives you an incredible battery of learning tools and ultimate flexibility.

You can practise almost any language you wish with the vast majority of the games and adapt them at will to your curriculum and the text books you are using. You will be able to deliver fun, unpredictable lively classes that your students will love.

You do not need many materials to play these games (in some cases you need only your regular black board or classroom props). Once you have used the games once you will need virtually NO PREPARATION TIME AT ALL! You will be able to give stimulating fun classes while keeping your evenings free for yourself and your own hobbies, family and friends.

You can easily control the class by switching to calming games when you need to calm everyone down or throw in an exciting game when you want to pick up the pace. Variety is the key and with over one hundred games you are spoiled for choice.

Each game has either a Calm down, Wake up or Excitable category to help you do this. In this way you control the mood to get maximum learning throughout the session.