What kind of person are you?

I saw this activity in an Oxford resources for teacher’s book and tried it out with my MEC and advanced students, as well as my Japanese conversation student from the embassy here in the city. I remember seeing Sarah Walker presenting something similar to this at a Cultura Inglesa teachers seminar a while back too. The main idea is to give the students a list of questions and ask the students to consider the answer they would give for each one, and also to be able to say why they chose that particular answer. Of course, there are no correct answers and students will probably have many different reasons for the answers they have chosen. I used the *questions from the book and they were as follows:

1. Are you a tea person or a coffee person?
2. Are you a morning person or an afternoon person?
3. Are you an earth person or a fire person?
4. Are you a mountain person or a valley person?
5. Are you a jungle person or a city person?
6. Are you an indoor person or an outdoor person?
7. Are you a garden person or a forest person?
8. Are you a diary person or a knotted handkerchief person?
9. Are you a straight line person or a loops and curves person?
10. Are you a sight person or a sound person?

I asked the students to answer the questions depending on how they themselves understood the questions, reminding them that there was no correct or incorrect answers. After they told their answers and talked about why they had chosen each answer. Next, I asked the students to tell me what they thought each of the questions had meant. For example, they told me that the first questions could be asking if people were British or American, and the ninth question was asking if someone was conservative or someone more open-minded or radical. It was a lot of fun and got the students talking. I think that the questions could easily be changed for groups of lower level students, as there are no correct answers they would probably enjoy this activity a lot, depending on how much vocabulary they had

*Questions were taken from ‘Classroom Dynamics’ by Jill Hadfield, an excellent book full of group building acvitities

Crazy compliments

I was looking through some material we had lying around for five-minute activities and came across this one that I haven’t yet used with my students as a warmer.

Create some placards with some instructions for the students to follow. The instructions can be something like – ‘say something nice about my English’, or, tell me something nice about my eyes’. Pin or tape each placard to the student’s backs and ask them to move around, reading and obeying the instructions as they read them.

Update:

I found out something interesting with one of my groups when we tried out this activity. My group has a good group feeling and get along just fine, its mixed adults and has a teenager in the group too. After explaining what the activity was and fixing the instructions to each person, they mingled around but were not saying anything. I asked them if they understood to which they replied yes. After a little prompting from me to get them going, they were still pretty quiet. Finally I asked them if the instructions were too hard or they just didn’t want to take part and they told me that they were embarrassed to give compliments to each other, as per the instructions hahahahaha!! A little more encouragement including compliments from me to get them going and we were soon rolling. Next time, I’ll choose something that will be probably a lot simpler for them to do, requiring no blushing

Paragraph changing activity

This activity can be used after the main work for a text is completed. It’s suitable for all levels and can be done in the following way:

1. Depending on the size and amount of paragraphs in the text, assign each student (if the group is small), pair or group a text from the text.
2. Ask the students to change two facts in their paragraph.
3. The students read their changed paragraph to the class.*
4. The other students try to spot the incorrect facts.

*It would be a good idea to ask advanced students to turn over their texts as the students read to see how much they can remember of the text from memory as they listen for the changed facts.

Vocabulary mingle

The course I teach contains text-based lessons and usually the students either use their dictionary, or their human dictionary (me), to solve their doubts. I liked the idea of getting my student’s arses up and out of their seats, especially during texts that can be tedious for some students that finish their work quickly and so we have this following activity:

Firstly, ask the students to read the text. If they come to a word they don’t know, ask them to underline it with a straight line. if they come across a word they know the meaning of but aren’t sure about, ask them to underline the word with a wiggly line. Then, the students take their books and go around the room asking the students the meanings of the words they don’t know or aren’t sure of. After the task, the teacher can also fill in the words that the students don’t know.