Memorisation activities

I put together this selection of memorisation activities for a CELTA course at LangLTC in Warsaw and thought it would be a good idea to share the activities here too. The activities can be used:

• after error correction
• to help students fix bits of new language in their heads before they need to produce it at a later stage in the lesson
• to exploit decontextualised sentences, for example from a gapfill
• to improve students’ confidence with bits of language
• as learner training – once they’ve learnt them, a lot of the activities are things they can try themselves or with fellow students, without needing a teacher to set them up

They are taken from various wonderful people I’ve worked with in the past, plus a couple of my own ideas. If you think there are any that should be credited differently, please let me know. It would also be great if you could add your own ideas for activities in the comments. Enjoy!

Draw your sentence

Aims: To exploit students’ creativity. To personalise language.

Use this after students do a controlled practice exercise or study a new set of vocabulary.

1. Students fold a piece of A4 paper into 8 boxes and put small numbers in the corner, like so:

1	2	1	2
3	4	3	4

2. On the left half of the paper only (which should have 4 boxes), they illustrate four of the sentences/words in any way they choose, one per box. They shouldn’t write the sentence/word.
3. Everyone puts the original sentences/words away.
4. Give them the paper from another group. On the right-hand side of the paper, they should write the corresponding sentence/word.
5. The original group corrects their answers and gives them feedback.

Mini books

A more high-tech version of ‘draw your sentence’, via Luke Raymond. Use this video to help you make your book:

 

1. Page 1 (the front cover) shows the target word/sentence. Each student should have a different item.
2. The book is passed to student B who draws a picture on page 2 to represent the target language.
3. Student C looks at the picture and writes the word/sentence they think it is on page 3, without looking back to page 1. They fold the book so page 3 now becomes the front cover.
4. The process is repeated until the book is finished.
5. Much hilarity ensues as the students see the way the language has been illustrated and how it has changed throughout the book.

Students love the ‘Chinese whispers/telephone’ nature of this game 🙂

What do you mean you didn’t read the sentences?

Via Olga Stolbova
(I now call this ‘evil memorisation’!)

Aims: To encourage students to notice context. To make them aware of gaps in their language.

Use this after students do a gapfill exercise.

1. Check the answers by writing them on the board (just the answers, not the complete sentence).
2. Students put away the original exercise.
3. They look at the answers on the board and have to recreate the original sentences. Expect protests! 🙂 Encourage them to write whatever they can remember, even if it’s just isolated words or phrases.
4. If they’re really struggling/When you start feeling sympathetic, give them one minute to look at the exercise without writing anything, then close their books again and continue to work on reproducing the sentences.
5. Students compare their recreated sentences to the originals. What were the differences?
6. Optional extra evilness: put away the sentences you’ve just rewritten. Now say them all to your partner./Write them all again. You can also do this at the end of the lesson when they’ve done other things in between.

If students are depressed that they can’t remember everything, tell them you don’t expect this. I normally say that I want them to remember about 80% of the sentences immediately (with some effort), and about 50% by the end of the lesson, once we’ve done a few other things and they’ve had time to forget. It can be useful to show them the forgetting curve too.

Vocabulary revision game

Via Anette Igel

Aim: To revise vocabulary covered in previous lessons.

1. Give each group a stack of small pieces of scrap paper (about 1/8 of A4 in size).
2. They should write the English word/phrase on one side, and put either the translation, definition or example sentence on the other side. The game can also be played with word/vocabulary cards if this is something you use with your students.
3. To create counters, rip one piece of small scrap into coin sized pieces. They write a letter or draw a symbol on each to indicate which is theirs. Alternatively, they can use any small item they can find (e.g. a paperclip, pen lid, etc).
4. The final thing they need to prepare the game is either a coin, or a scrap paper ‘coin’, which can be made by folding another small piece up into a tight square, then writing ‘heads’ on one side and ‘tails’ on the other.
5. The words should be arranged in a circle to create a game track. All of the counters should be placed on the same word to start.
6. One player flips the coin. Heads = 2, tails = 1. To help them remember which is which, H has two legs, T has one leg. They move 1 or 2 spaces around the circle. When they land, they can do one of two things:
   1. If the word/phrase is face up, say the translation, definition or example sentence.
   2. If the translation/definition/example sentence is face up, say the word/phrase.
7. In either case, if they are correct, they turn the card over and stay there. If they are wrong, they turn the card over and go back to where they started the turn.

The winner is the person who has moved furthest around the circle at the end of a specified time.

Back translation/Reverse translation

Aims: To help students notice differences between L1 and L2. To help them notice gaps in their language.

1. Select one sentence per pair or ask students to choose one. Sentences could be from controlled practice exercises, tapescripts, reading, sentences produced by students…
2. Each pair translates their sentences from English into L1. For multilingual groups, they work alone.
3. Either: give the sentence to another pair immediately (if they share a language) OR take sentences away and return them to the same person/pair in the following lesson.
4. Students translate the L1 sentence back into English.
5. They then compare their English version to the original, and notice any differences. The teacher’s job is to point out whether the students’ English version is still acceptable, and to help them understand any mistakes or differences in meaning. Though it obviously helps, you don’t need to speak L1 to do this activity.

This could also be set up as a mingle activity. Student A says their L1 sentence, student B says it in English, then student B says their L1 sentence and A says it in English. If they get it wrong, the ‘L1’ student should say ‘No, try again.’ until they get it right. My students seem to get a lot out of this, especially with language that differs structurally from Polish, like verb + gerund/infinitive.

Drill, drill, drill

Aims: To improve student confidence before speaking. To help students internalise the language.

There are hundreds of ways to drill new language.

• Point at words/flashcards, moving rapidly between them and returning to problem words often.
• Whisper, shout, go slow, speed up, say it like an old lady/Arnold Schwarzenegger, be happy/excited/sad.
• Boys and girls, call and response (e.g. half say question, half answer).
• What’s missing? Students close eyes/turn around. You remove one or more flashcards/words.
• Disappearing text (good for dialogues): start with the whole dialogue on the board. Gradually remove parts of it, either a line at a time or leaving behind key words, with students repeating it multiple times.
• Key word drills (good for functional language): draw a table with numbered cells. Put one word from each sentence in each cell e.g. for the phrases How about going to the cinema?  What about seeing a film? Let’s watch a film. you could have:
  1. How    2. What    3. Let
  They say the phrase from memory. They can test each other by saying the number and their partner saying the sentence. Removing the words (but not the numbers!) increases the level of challenge. Follow up: can you remember all the phrases without looking?
• Mingle: students have one picture/word each. They mingle, show their paper to their partner who has to say the correct word/phrase. To add challenge, they swap after each turn.
• Circle drill: pass a flashcard around the circle. Each person says it in turn. You can also turn it into a dialogue e.g. Receiving student: What’s the weather like today? Passing student: It’s sunny. To add challenge, time the class to see how long it takes to pass around the whole circle, then repeat faster.

Some important things to remember are:

• Make sure students know the meaning of the language before the drill.
• Choral > group > individual. Don’t put students on the spot too early.
• Model language naturally: you need to sound like a stuck record. It’s easy to overstress when correcting.
• Keep the pace up. Add variety wherever possible. For example, can they drill it in pairs and listen to each other?

Mini challenges

Many of these can be done as pairwork after a teacher demonstration. Some are useful for fast finishers too.

• Say all of the new vocabulary/sentences from the exercise as fast as you can to your partner.
  You can do this before drilling as a test, so that you only drill language students struggle with.
• Can you remember the word/sentence before X on the list?
  If students really struggle, give them 1 minute to look and remember before doing the exercise.
• How many of the words from the page can you write alone in two minutes? Compare with a partner.
  This can be at the end of a lesson after lots of work with the language, or at the start of the next class.
• Mistake sentences: read the sentence with a mistake and students correct it.
  Mistakes could be false friends, articles, tenses (especially ones where connected speech confuses)…
• Pause sentences: read a sentence but pause in the middle of the collocation. Do students know what comes next?
  Good for improving the ability to predict upcoming language when listening. 

Quizlet

Quizlet is an easy-to-use website which allows you to create lots of activities for the price of one – add some vocabulary and you immediately have about 6 games, plus the ability to print flashcards for lots more. For a full guide to how to use Quizlet and create your own content on there, plus links to level-specific groups, see http://independentenglish.wordpress.com/quizlet – it’s a bit out-of-date as the site has changed it’s layout, but most of what’s on there still holds. If you have at least 6 devices (phones, tablets etc) in your classroom, you can also play Quizlet Live – my students absolutely love it!

 

Quizlet Live with a room of 40+ teachers in Kazakhstan

What are your favourite memorisation activities?