For Teaching to Foreign Learners (EFL)

1. Have a Ball:

Materials: Tennis Ball or Wadded up piece of paper

Level: Low to Low Intermediate

Game: There are many variations of this game which are often used in EFL classrooms. The game begins with the teacher holding the ball. The teacher says a word (for example Dog) and throws the ball to a student. The student must say a word beginning with the last letter in the teacher's word (for example Girl). Then the student throws the ball back to teacher who, in turn, throws the ball to another student who must say a word beginning with the last letter in the previous word. To add an element of excitement to the game, the teacher can limit the amount of time the students have to think of a word. If the student can not think of a word, they must use the preceding word correctly m a sentence. Then the game begins again.

Hints: Returning the ball to the teacher by students allows the teacher to control where the ball goes and how hard it is thrown. The ball can also be used to instigate dialogue between students, or review vocabulary.

2. Tic Tac Toe (Крестики и Нолики):

Materials: Chalkboard and Chalk

Level: Low to Intermediate High

The Game: Break the class into two teams (Xs and Os). Draw a Tic Tac Toe board on the chalkboard. Fill in the spaces with English words (for example: vocabulary words, verbs, prepositions or have the students generate the words).

To play the game, have a team choose a block on the board. They, then, must use the word in that block in a sentence correctly to fill in the box. The first team to fill in three blocks in a row wins.

Hints: Use verbs and have the students use them in a sentence with the tenses they know or prepositions in prepositional phrases or limit the use of the word to questions. The game can be applied to a variety of levels. If one or two strong students are dominating the game, call on specific students to make sentences. A time limit should be imposed to encourage the game to move along.

3. Pictionary:

Materials: Chalkboard and Chalk

Level: Low to Advanced

The Game: Break the class into two teams. Call a member from one team to the front of the chalkboard. Give the student a word, phrase or idiom that they have studied in writing (in a written form). The student must draw a picture which represents the word on the chalkboard while the two teams guess which word he is using. Although the student can use hand gestures and act, he cannot say a word. He must use his picture to convey the meaning of the word. The first team to guess the word wins. The student who guesses a true word becomes the next artist.

Hint: This game is great fun but can get a little loud. If one or two strong students are dominating the game, make them full time artists.

4. Running Dictation:

Materials: Several copies of a short story.

Level: Low to Advanced

The Game: Break the class up into pairs of students. Post a copy of the story for each team at the back of the classroom. To play the game, one student acts as a runner and the other as a secretary. The runner runs to the copy of the story and memorizes as much of it as he can. Then he runs back to the scribe and recites what he has remembered. The first team to finish the story wins the game.

Hint: Vary the difficulty of the story depending on the level of the students. Remove punctuation from the story or vocabulary words, then have the students fill that information as they go along if that is what you are teaching. This also works great to improve reading comprehension if you mix up the parts of the story and the students have to put it together later.

One good story should be recommended:

A farmer must transport his dog, a duck, and a bag of corn across a river. The boat he has to use is very small – so small that he can take only one of the three in the boat with himself at a time. If he leaves the dog alone with the duck, the dog will kill and eat the duck. If he leaves the duck alone with the corn, the duck will eat up the corn. What is the least number of trips the farmer must make to transport all three across the river safely?

The teacher should delete the following vocabulary words which the students had to fill in by themselves: transport, corn, leaves, kills, eat up in his presentation of the text.

Объясните значение использования технологии электронного портфеля.

Электронный технологический портфель студента-экономиста, изучающего иностранный язык (ИЯ) по проектно-текстовой технологии, понимается нами как свод составляющих компонентов проектно-текстовой технологии, представляющих собой теоретический материал по выполнению каждого из обозначенных в своде компонентов виде алгоритма, карты идей текста, ассоциативного письма, способа определения текстовых лексических логических связей, эпистемы (концептуальной темы, имеющей верхнюю и нижние границы); тезауруса и глоссария. Электронный технологический портфель в таком понимании – это оптимальный свод для выбора обучающимся нужного инструктивного ориентира, что необходимо для реализации проектно-текстовой технологии в практической деятельности. Электронный технологический портфель студента-экономиста, содержащий свод выбора инструктивных ориентиров, представлен в нижеприведенной таблице 5.

Под сводом понимаются сведённые в одно целое и расположенные в известном порядке теоретические сведения, материалы, тексты, которые мы рассматриваем как инструктивные ориентиры выбора нужной теоретической информации из электронного портфеля обучающегося по проектно-текстовой технологии экономиста.

Таблица 5