Fun Activities for Adult Learners

This article looks at various fun and engaging educational activities for adult learners that can be used in lessons.

The Mingling Activity

Students must stand up, move around and chat to each other informally in order to get some information. You can make a space available in the centre of the room for easy access. There are variations on the task, such as ‘find someone who’ where each student has a list of questions that they need to ask everybody. As an ice-breaker during an Academic English course, questions have included: do you know the difference between last and at last? And: do you ask other people to check your writing and give feedback?

In any case, this phenomenal energiser will stimulate your students, and with a healthy dose of adrenaline, can feature right at the beginning of a course, for example.

The Cloze Task

Featuring a portion of text with certain words removed, this trusty exercise finds its way into all manners of tests and exams. Sometimes, a word is given as a clue, but its form may change. There may even be a choice of words or multiple choice questions on offer.

As an example, the text is about the Euro with 25 words available of which one is given as an example and 4 are extraneous. One of the sentences reads: The anti-Europe movement in Britain has a _____ history. The choices (in alphabetical order) are: about, all British, changed, currency, for, leader, long, money, not, one, only, part, parties, promises, protested, spent, survey, terrible, thanks, top, trust, us, won. In case you didn’t get it, the answer is long.

Home is where the heart is

There are plenty of enjoyable activities that play on elements of the learner’s L1 (mother tongue). For example, if you look at Learner English: second edition by Michael Swan & Bernard Smith, CUP, 2010 which, for first timers, will probably be a revelation. In this bible for teachers, the editors address typical errors made by speakers of no fewer than 22 languages and other affiliated dialects. Thus, by gaging which types of mistakes are commonly made by a speaker of a certain language, you then have some meat to build an exercise around.

Looking specifically at pronunciation problems for Dutch speakers, for example, phonetic symbols are used. For symbols see: https://ipa.typeit.org/full/ and for an app: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/apps/sounds-right.When phonemes are unshaded in a box, then they are unfamiliar and may cause problems; here are three combinations followed by one in a drill: i.e. /?/ featuring the long sound in early, which could be confused with /?/ (known as the schwa), the final sound in teacher. Further, /g/ as in guinea pig versus the /d??/ in jumble and finally /r/ which is different as the sound that exists for Dutch speakers is a rolling r, which is not present in English. So, an example, using the /?/ vs the /?/ you could make a drill like this. With the first line containing the /?/: earth, birth, terror, worthy. Then the next line with /?/: feature, potato, picture. Lastly, you can mix the two sounds up like this: bird’s creature curd pitcher heard. The student reads out one line first and you repeat if necessary, then move on to the next and he/ she follows your example.

Another task that can be adapted from Learner English covers grammar tense issues such as present perfect vs past simple. In the case of Chinese speakers for example, the book tells us on p.315 that: ‘Chinese… does not conjugate the verb to express time relations. Learners have serious difficulty in handling English tenses and aspects’. As a result, it would be useful to test a Chinese speaker’s knowledge of tenses, i.e. the present perfect, but only after the tense has been demonstrated and practiced in class.

Puzzled?

Crosswords can be tough for some and lots of fun for others; they are great for testing a student’s passive knowledge. The teacher can also play an active role in this game by prompting and giving clues if required, i.e. giving a synonym, antonym, drawing a picture, using mime, mimicry or playing hangman (see further below) to get the answer from the learner. Just to let you in on a secret, or to get a nod from those in the know: this can be a very enjoyable part of teaching too.

Word-searches can also be good for helping students to remember new words, and once they are aware of them, they can use them to make new sentences. Again, you can help, though this time by giving example sentences or hint at a context that is relevant and/ or familiar to them. It is worth remembering that some people are not good at puzzles, so don’t push it. As long as you give them a chance to try their best and set a fair time limit. Then, if push comes to shove, and all else fails, you can always demonstrate new vocabulary in a different way.

Sing a song of sixpence

Singing lyrics to remind students of a word can work, but only if they know the song. On one occasion, the teacher spontaneously broke out into song (All things great and beautiful) in response to a discussion question that was: can you carry a tune? This startled the class, and then much to everyone’s surprise, a student broke out into song and revealed that he had once been a member of a professional choir.

As a variation on the cloze task for activating vocabulary, gap fill tasks can also be used with the lyrics of songs and can focus on particular elements of grammar. Here is a useful list: https://www.tefltunes.com/grammarsongs.aspx

Lucky dip/ Drawing straws

Who doesn’t like having a few options to choose from? This can be a case of putting a few flash cards or slips of paper in a bag or in your hands to be randomly selected. A nice version is a speaking activity for advanced students where there is a selection of impromptu topics for debate that need to be discussed for a minute per person. This is a superb way to test speaking and vocabulary skills and will be challenging, unpredictable and quite often exhilarating. A few topics that have been used are: abortion, colonialism, diplomatic immunity for ambassadors, euthanasia and legalising soft drugs.

Hangman

When a student’s passive knowledge is up to it (B1 lower intermediate or above should suffice), the words are often at the back of the mind, but not being used actively. This game helps them to find the right word. It is familiar to most people and is usually liked by everyone. Notwithstanding, the teacher can still give further clues if nothing else works.

Memory game

This is a fun way to learn and practice vocabulary, especially for lower levels. For example, objects can be introduced and after the meaning of each word is clear, the idea is for each student to memorise all the objects. A group can relay one object at a time switching from student to student. The rules could be that if somebody forgets an object they are out. The winner could be given a prize.

For more advanced learners, when overturned, pairs of cards can reveal different types of grammar without mentioning any meta language (and may also contain pictures and may or may not focus on a topic) and is a twist on the memory game. For example, a pair of phrasal verbs such as switch on and turn off. Another pair could be nouns, i.e. remote control and TV aerial. Here television is the topic.

Jigsaw Task

Chiefly an information gap exercise where a piece of text is cut into pieces and divided between groups. Information is exchanged with others before completing the task.

This works well as a combination of reading and listening as students fill in the blanks. Let’s say the text is a murder case that is being investigated by a group of detectives on one side and involves the suspects of the crime on the other. The good thing is, you can be as creative as you like: either the suspects have to be convincing and either work on their alibis by thinking on their feet, make a statement and use intonation to be convincing, or practice using past continuous, past perfect or past perfect continuous to show what they were or were not doing between certain times or detailing actions undertaken in sequential order. While the detectives can practice their questioning techniques, be impulsive (while practicing fluency), size up how convincing the suspects are and revise the same tenses as their counter-parts. 

Tumbling dice

A brilliant trick of the trade is to make revision enjoyable and this can be fun for students of all ages. One idea is to practice verb tenses where 1 on a dice = present simple, 2 = present continuous, 3 = past simple, 4 = past continuous and 5 = present perfect. Naturally, after you have been through more grammar, then you can do another 5. Another game involves question formation, i.e. 1 = who, 2 = why, 3 =what, 4 =when and 5 = which. Yet another one is phrasal verbs. The thinking behind this one is that a student (intermediate or above) comes up with a particle to go with the verb, i.e. put (no 1 on the dice) + on (particle) and he/ she can make a sentence with it. This could also include 2 = give, 3 = take, 4 = get and 5 = look.

Have you got any fun activities you use that were not mentioned? Or other variations? Please share! It would be great to hear from you!