Teaching Grammar with Board Races - TEFL ESL

When your class needs a change of pace, you can practice basic language points in unusual ways. A board race, as demonstrated here, will re-energize your class. In this game students must categorize the two forms of comparative adjectives.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• TEFL
• EFL
• ELT
• ESL
• TESOL
• TESL
• Teaching Grammar
• Teacher techniques
• games and activities

[leonardo899]

Are teachers supposed to spend on chocolates out of their own money just so students will participate in an activity?

[BridgeTEFL]

@leonardo899

It's really up to the teacher whether or not they want to buy candy. You can also figure out other rewards that do not require you to purchase anything!

[son441]

hi bridgetefl - one question - if they make a mistake do you have to stop that team and make them change their answer? Or do you correct mistakes at the end of the activity (in which case does this sometimes undermine the winning team because despite being first finished they've made errors...?)

Looks great though. Thanks for the video - i'll have a go at this one.

[BridgeTEFL]

@son441

I'm glad you're enjoying our videos! You do not need to stop the students in the middle of the game. You can wait until the end when they students are making full sentences from the words. You will often find that the other students will correct their teammates while playing the game.

If they get one wrong, they lose a point. If only one person gets one wrong and they happen to be on the team that won the race, I would call it a tie.

Thank you!

BridgeTEFL

[naturremind]

2. From your suggestions how to use this type of board races you give at the end of the video, I can only think of using it for past tense (-ed vs. irregular form). The others examples (conjugation, verb tenses) are not quite clear to me. Could you, please, give an example for each of them?

Thanks a lot

[BridgeTEFL]

@naturremind

Hello naturremind,

You can use this activity in many ways. For example, in one column, you can write the present tense of verbs (ex/ eat) and in the next column, you can have your student write the past participle (ex/ eaten).

For conjugation, you could write the verb 'to be' at the top of the board. In one column, you could write the subject pronouns (ex/I, you, He) and in the second column, the students would write the correct form of the verb (ex/am, are, is).

BridgeTEFL

[mlucasone]

That girl NEEDED that chocolate. There is no way she would have allowed her team to lose this race.

[ButherLi55ett]

The lady in the black top really wanted to win the chocolate!

[andrewvincent30]

I go along with her views, Games = emotional intelligence

[763000]

The only problem in this video is that T corrected the S very explicitly when she was speaking. S: "- .. more dangerous than USA" T:-"in the USA". Instead of doing that, she could simply repeat her sentence by correcting it (maybe with a bit change in her tone when she was saying "the".) . She would realize her mistake. Giving oral feedback is very important and it is better when it is done implicitly. It is not cool to embarrass such a hard-working and motivated student.

[balti37069]

What if you're teaching younger children who can't reach the board?

[catbeasttrex]

I usually buy rot chocolates , great activity 

[makeiteasyable]

cute teacher

[AntiIgnorantDimwit]

@leonardo899 I get your point - I think. Having to bribe students is poor. Says more about ESL students than their teachers though.

[boardsdecanada]

@leonardo899 cheap ass.

[simon44]

I tried this with a class of 25 Italian 17 year olds and it failed pretty badly. They wouldnt run back to the end of the line and because there was so many students in limited space they got in each others way and there wasnt enough room on the board to even complete the race correctly. Italian students like to cheat by the way. They are very competitive which is good but I cannot stress enough how much they all cheated in every activity I did. :P

[Warhammer820]

you really should not reward with candy

[bwlee24fsu]

What a wonderful idea! Bravo. The students definitely seemed to enjoy the exercise.