Class Revision Activities

Revision. Of vocabulary, grammar, and functional language. Students need it and often want it. Teachers are told to do it but are also often told to avoid written exercises and focus on speaking. How can you put all these restrictions together to revise successfully?

With a group:

• Students work in pairs and each gets a list of words to explain to the other who has to guess. Or, students look through their books/notes and in teams choose five words to test the other team on – they give the meaning and the other team gives the word. This is good at the end of a term, but not really challenging too early on.
• You bring in a load of cut up paper, dictate the words or phrases to be revised, and students divide or rank them (most positive to most negative; it’s something I have or something I don’t have; it’s a quality I value in a spouse or a quality I don’t want in a spouse) and then randomly choose a few which they then have to construct a dialog or story around.
• Hot seat.
• Grammar auction. This is still primarily written but have them work in pairs and discuss in English.

With a one to one:
This is harder. You can explain words and get the student to guess…but what if s/he doesn’t know? Then you’re stuck and the student feels less than clever.

How about some of these activities?