HoW To TURn AnY ACTiVITy InTO A GaME
First of all, let me say this: games are not the be-all and end-all of English teaching.
Listen to your average CELTA course leader, and you might get the impression that students are unable to learn anything of value unless they're running around the room screaming the alphabet and hurling balls at one another.
Not so. Understandably, quite a few students will find such activities just as stupid, boring, and humiliating as you would if you were in their place.
I do agree, however, that games are, used selectively and in moderation, a good way to break up the tedium and motivate younger learners, any anyway you should be able to tell after you try to play a few games whether the students enjoy them or not. If they don't, for Christ's sake don't force them.
But if they do, here's a good trick to try to make coursebook activities more interesting.
Suppose you have some kind of practice test, or just your average gap-filling textbook activity. Let's say it has twenty questions.
There are a couple of different ways to turn it into a game.
The simplest way is to put the students into groups -- 3 or 4 students in each group -- and tell them that whoever gets the most questions correct will win something. An extra point on the next exam, for example, or a chocolate bar, or an eraser, or a gold star, whatever.
Or, for example, you could let the class (assuming the class is of a reasonable size, not one of those 50 student jobs you might encounter in a Thai high school) all do the activities together. Tell them you will give them $1000 for each correct answer, and TAKE AWAY $5000 for each incorrect answer. (You can adjust the amount for the ability of the class or the ease of the activity -- if it's really easy, for example, you can give $50 for a correct answer and take away $10,000 for incorrect answers.)
Let them tell you each answer individually and write the answers on the board. The object is for the students to make a profit. (If they're particularly hard to motivate, you could then tell them they get one extra point on the next exam for each $100 they have, or whatever.
There's of course that favorite activity of that goofy dago Mario Rinvoloducri, or whatever his name is, the "Grammar Auction" where students have to "bid" for the correct answer. That one has never worked for me, too complicated, student's often don't understand what they have to do.
Much easier is to give the students, say, an imaginary $50, in groups or as a class, and let them "bet" whether their answer is correct or not. (Most people are more familiar with casinos than auctions in my humble experience.)
Or there's the old "tic-tac-toe" option. Draw a grid on the board with 20 squares, each square representing one of the questions. Put the students into two or three teams, and if they can tell you the correct answer, their team gets the square. Whoever can get three (or four, maybe) in a row THE MOST TIMES is the winner. Don't just stop after one team gets three-in-a-row, of course, they have to answer all the questions.
So there. On your mark, get set, go.