ESL Speaking Activities, Games and more

ESL Speaking

If you're on the lookout for some new English speaking games and activities to make your classes interesting and engaging, some help is here. First of all, check out one of my other websites: ESL Speaking: Games, Activities, and Resources.

Next, don't forget to sign-up for my mailing list. You'll get 40 ESL games and activities delivered straight to your inbox, along with lots of other stuff that I think will be helpful for you.

40 Free ESL Speaking Games and Activities

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Next, go to ESL Warm-up Games and Activities. There's lots of goodness here that you can use to help get your classes started off the right way.

Finally, check out Speaking Activities That Don't Suck: Foolproof Ways to Force Your EFL Students to Produce Enormous Amounts of English from English Teacher X. Speaking activities, presented in an extremely funny, witty way.

Top 5 Books for Beginner English Teachers

If you're looking to bone up on your knowledge about teaching English before you head abroad, check out my top 5 books for the ESL teacher just getting started. Of course, it's better to take a course like the Celta, but reading a few books is obviously better than nothing.



How To Teach Englishby Jeremy Harmer

How to Teach English by Jeremy Harmer is a classic and should be the first book you read on the topic. It's extremely well-organized into short sections, assumes that you know nothing and also gives some very practical advice and some activities to help get up and running for your first few weeks in the classroom.

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by Jack C. Richards

While more theoretical than the Harmer book, this one can provide you with a solid foundation of the  major approaches for language teaching.  It's perfect for the ESL teacher who is already confident in the classroom, but needs some knowledge about the specifics of teaching English as a Second Language

Speaking Activities That Don't Suckby English Teacher X

Speaking Activities that Don't Suck by English Teacher X is an excellent speaking games and activities resources for the beginner teacher before they walk into the classroom with nothing. When I was just starting out, I always tried to have a few speaking activities in my folder or in my head that I could pull out if required. This book will help you with that in an interesting, engaging kind of way.

Grammar Slammer: How to Explain the Hard Stuff and Impress Difficult and Demanding Students by English Teacher X

If you're clueless about English grammar like most native English speakers, this book will be your new best friend. Before you walk into a classroom, it's wise to have a basic idea of what you're doing and this book will teach you, but in the least boring way I've ever seen.

How To Teach Speakingby Scott Thornbury

Most newbie teachers will primarily end up teaching speaking and conversation so "How to Teach Speaking" by Scott Thornbury will give you a leg up on the competition. It does a great job of covering the theory, but also gives a wealth of practical advice and information that you can use in the classroom.

Teaching Websites and Resources I use in my own classes

Teaching Resources for ESL Teachers

A quick post about some resources from around the Internet  that I use for my own classes when I'm in need of a bit of inspiration.

Classroom Resources for ESL Teachers

ESL Speaking-  The ultimate site for ESL speaking games and activities, as well as ESL textbook recommendations.

Breaking News English - My go to site for any kind of current events ESL conversation or ESL discussion class. I like the short 2-page mini lessons, but they also have full lesson plans here.

ESL Writing -Also a great site for lesson plans specifically for ESL writing classes. My favorite ones actually are the ESL listening lesson plans, which are perfect for an hour-long class.

Speaking Activities That Don't Suck- Lots of ready-to-go speaking activities and games for ESL classes that you don't have to put a lot of thought into. Perfect if you get a last minute class thrown at you and you're in a bit of a time crunch.

Presentation Expressions -If you teach presentations or public speaking, you'll want to check out this site (and also buy yourself this book: Speaking of Speech: Basic Presentation Skills for Beginners).

Business English Pod -My favorite site for business English and interview preparation. They have paid content, but much of it is free and you can probably get by with just that for your lessons with a bit of preparation by you.

ESL Trivia and Word Puzzles- I love to do a warm-up brain-teaser at the beginning of every class and this is the best book I've found with puzzles and trivia geared specifically to ESL students. The stuff around the Internet either has language that is too difficult or is geared to kids.

Don't forget to sign-up for 40 free ESL games and activities delivered straight to your inbox.

A Fabulously Fun Relative Clause Speaking Activity

Relative Clause Speaking Activity

This week, my classes have been studying about using relative clauses.  The first class was heavy on the grammar with this quite serious self study relative clause worksheet and some writing practice based on these relative clause family and friend questions. For the second class, I wanted to lighten it up and bit and do some more kind of "fun" things, so I made this "Who or What is it?" game that the students really enjoyed. Here's how to do it:

Make a list of things or people and cut them up into little pieces and put them in an envelope.  Put the students in groups of 4 and the first person has to choose a paper at random and keep it secret. Then, they give hints about it, preferably using relative clauses.

For example, if they chose Barrack Obama, they could say things like, "This is a man who's from the USA." "I'm sure he's someone everyone knows." "He has a lot of power which he uses to influence the whole world."

The other 3 people on the team get to guess who it is and whoever guesses it correctly gets to keep the paper, gets 1 point and then is the next person who chooses a random paper and gives hints.

In order to avoid endless incorrect guesses, I said that if you made an incorrect guess, you were "out" of that round unless all the other people also had incorrect guesses, in which case it starts over.

I gave the students about 15 minutes and at the end, the person in each group with the most points got a small prize.

Check out this Ebook if you want to  get a University Job in South Korea

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

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Games and Activities for your ESL Classroom

If you're stuck in a rut and looking for some new ideas for your English learning classrooms, check out some of my other sites.  Lots of interesting and fun ideas for both adults and children.

Fun ESL Activities for the Classroom

ESL Warm-up games and Activities

Speaking Activities for ESL Classrooms

Or, check out Speaking Activities That Don't Suck: Foolproof Ways to Force Your EFL Students to Produce Enormous Amounts of English

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

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Book Review: Speaking Activities that Don't Suck

If you're looking for some new ideas for English as a second of foreign language speaking, check out this site that I've made: Speaking Activities for ESL Students. 

However, if you're looking for bigger (and quite possibly better!), here is my top recommendation: Speaking Activities that Don't Suck.  It's quite genius and I regularly refer to it for my own classes. 


And of course, sign-up for the 40 free ESL speaking games and activities that I use in my own classes.