Online ESL Games
Instead of implementing traditional ESL worksheets, teachers are turning to the internet to find interactive games to use in their classrooms. Dave’s ESL Café offers hundreds of games to use with ESL students. Research driven, many games offer a fun and educational alternative to traditional ESL instruction and worksheets.
Memory and ESL Games
According to TEFLGames.com, games make ESL instruction meaningful. In turn, playing games with ESL students helps create a lasting impression which creates neurons to the long-term memory from the short-term memory.
When information is stored in the long-term memory, learned content is meaningful and memorable. For example, if ESL students were asked to close their eyes and think about the happiest day of their lives, they would most likely see an image or episode in his/her mind.
The reason why most people do not see words when remembering an event is because the long-term memory stores information in chunks and images are likely to be a result of a memorable event. Therefore, if a student cannot conjure a visual image, he/she does not understand the information. Thus, reading and language comprehension is compromised in the process.
Games create a welcome escape from everyday language struggles for ESL students. According to teachingenglishgames.com, ESL games can be used to teach survival English.Very basic forms of the English language can be taught in a game format. Keeping games fun and simple is perhaps the best method to use when teaching beginning ESL students.
Examples of ESL Games
A simple activity like implementing ESL flash cards can be an engaging and a simple game to play when instructing ESL students . Simple yet, structured, flash cards offer a competitive and fun learning environment. Instruction may include implementing flash cards for simple and complex English instruction. Words in coordination with pictures create a visual image for students to remember when recalling a word. The bilingual translation is also helpful when creating flashcards.
Games not only teach vocabulary, but they can also teach other skills. For example, the game- Baby! What Time is It?!! -teaches students basic time telling skills. After drawing a clock on the board for each group, the teacher calls out a time. One student from each group rushes to the board to draw the minute and hour hand on the clock. The group who gets the most clock times correct wins (Kris DeVaar Seoul, South Korea-Dave’s ESL Café). Other ESL games include:
- Beginner Birthday Bingo
- Barbie and Ken Have Fun With Prepositions
- Body Parts Musical Madness
- Brainteasers
- Eat Your Verbs
- Grammar Bingo
- Jeopardy
- Mad libs
Simple games offer a chance for language enhancement and interactive learning. When an ESL student is engaged in the learning process, he/she will feel empowered to learn beyond the expected level of capability. Creating a visual image is an essential part of the language learning process, and games create a lasting impression in which an ESL student can connect visions to language.
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