Energizing Reading Classes: Collaborative Games

Energizing Reading Classes: Collaborative Games

Elicin, Canan
Cakir, Yesim

Reading is of great importance in basic linguistic knowledge acquisition and English language learning. However, there is a big challenge for teachers to create new and engaging tasks for reading classes. The aim of this workshop is to illustrate collaborative and motivating activities for studying reading passages in class with students. The activities aim to help students examine texts closely to comprehend them, to reinforce grammar and vocabulary, to distinguish details from the main idea while interacting with each other in different contexts through games and/or competitions. They require little or no preparation on the part of the teacher. Moreover, they can be adapted to other skill classes (speaking, listening, grammar, and vocabulary teaching) to be employed as warm-up activities or to increase student participation and interest. The workshop will begin with an activity that teachers can use in their own classes to energize students. Then several activities (4- 6 as time allows) will be presented and performed with the participants. The first three activities are called Hexagon Race, Horse Race, and S.O.S. Game. They are competitive games in which different question types, such as scanning, grammar, reference, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, True/False, word formation, and word collocation can be asked. Run to Win is the next activity which especially lends itself to scanning as the idea is to encourage the students to read as quickly as possible in a race. The next activity is Find Your Match. It appeals to kinesthetic learners, as well. Finally, Stump the Teacher enables students to generate questions to ask their teachers. All these activities have different versions to be adapted according to students’ needs and classroom size.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-04

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