Elementary Vocabulary Games PDF download
This book is a resource book of practice activities for vocabulary: the games have been designed to practise, not to introduce, new vocabulary. The book assumes that introduction and explanation of the vocabulary has been done in the textbook or other course that the teacher and class is following.
The vocabulary items have been arranged in lexical sets following topics used in most textbooks and courses at this level. The topic area, vocabulary focus, structures and any additional vocabulary (not the main focus) that the students will need are all listed at the beginning of each game. The structures have been kept to an elementary level and are for each game what a student at this stage could reasonably be expected to know.
Each game has three stages: memorising, personalising and communicating, taking the student through the three processes described above, though the three stages are self-contained so that the teacher is free to select or discard any stage, according to what she feels her students need.
The games make use of a variety of techniques. Variety is important in language teaching, and a succession of games based on the same principles, though exciting and novel at first, would soon pall. Techniques used include information gap, guessing, search, matching, exchanging, collecting, combining, arranging, and card games, board games, puzzles and role-play.
The simplest activities are based on the information gap principle. In these activities Student A has access to some information which is not held by Student B. Student B must acquire this information to complete a task successfully. This type of game may be one-sided, as in the above example, or reciprocal, where both players have information which they must pool to solve a common problem. The games may be played in pairs or small groups, where all the members of the group have some information.
Guessing games are a familiar variant on this principle. The player with the information deliberately withholds it, while others guess what it might be.
Search games are another variant, involving the whole class. In these games everyone in the class has one piece of information. Players must obtain all or a large amount of the information available to fill in a questionnaire or to solve a problem. Each student is thus simultaneously a giver and a collector of information.
Matching games are based on a different principle, but also involve a transfer of information. These games involve matching corresponding pairs of cards or pictures, and may be played as a whole class activity, where everyone must circulate until they find a partner with a corresponding card or picture; or a pairwork or small group activity, where Players must choose pictures or cards from a selection to match those chosen by their partner from the same selection; or as a card game on the ‘snap’ principle.
Matching-up games are based on a jigsaw or ‘fitting together’ principle. Each player in a group has a list of opinions, preferences, wants or possibilities. Through discussion and compromise the group must reach an agreement.
Exchanging games are based on the ‘barter’ principle. Players have certain articles, cards or ideas which they wish to exchange for others. The aim of the game is to make an exchange which is satisfactory to both sides.
Exchanging and collecting games are an extension of this. Players have certain articles or cards which they are willing to exchange for others in order to complete a set. This may be played as a whole class activity, where players circulate freely, exchanging articles or cards at random; or as an inter-group activity, where players agree to collect a certain set of articles as a group and then exchange articles between groups; or as a card game on the ‘rummy’ principle.
Combining activities are those in which the players must act on certain information in order to arrange themselves in groups such as families or people spending holidays together.
Arranging games are also sometimes called sequencing or ordering games. These are games where the players must acquire information and act on it in order to arrange items in a specific order. Items to be arranged can be picture cards, events in a narrative, or even the players themselves!
Board games and card games are familiar game types, where the aim is to be the first round a board, or to collect the most cards, or to get rid of the cards first. The cards and squares on the board are used as stimuli to provoke a communication exchange.
All the above activities may include elements of puzzle-solving, role-play, or simulation.
Puzzle-solving activities occur when participants in the game share or pool information in order to solve a puzzle or a mystery: Where did the aliens come from? Did Annie commit the murder? etc.
Many games include an element of role-play. Players are given the name and some characteristics of a fictional character. However, these are not role-plays in the true sense, as the role-play element is always subordinate to the game for the purposes of language use. The outcome of a game is ‘closed’: once cards are distributed it develops in a certain predetermined way, while role-play proper is open-ended and may develop in any number of ways.
The three games in each unit are all different in nature and make use of different techniques.
The first game in each unit is a memorisation game, designed to fix the meaning of the word in the student’s mind. These games are linguistic games as distinct from the other two activities in the unit which focus on communication; their focus is on accuracy rather than fluency and for the most part they only require the student to produce single words rather than sentences. The games used in this stage are very simple versions of matching (including lotto and bingo games), sorting, ordering, guessing (including mime games), arranging and collecting. In each case, the aim of the game is to get the students to remember and produce the right word (matching words to pictures for example, or guessing which word is being mimed or sorting words into two lexical sets).
The activities in the second stage (personalising) are not really games, but humanistic activities designed to get the students to relate the new words to their personal experience. They fall into two stages: a reflective phase, where students are asked to visualise something or associate the words with their personal life and preferences, and a communicative phase where they are asked to share what they have thought or written with others. The language in this stage is also fairly controlled (sentence patterns and frames are often given), though the students will now need to produce whole utterances not single words.
The activities in the third stage are communication games where the focus is on successful completion of a goal such as finding a person, solving a puzzle or completing a drawing, rather than on correct production of lexis and structures. In this stage, language is less controlled and there is more flexibility and creativity required of the students. Games in this section include the whole range of communicative games: matching, searching, information gap, puzzle solving, role-play, arranging and ordering and exchanging and collecting games.
Format:PDF
Size: 8 MB
Pages:120 p.
Series:Vocabulary Games
Level:Elementary
Date:1998
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Elementary Vocabulary Games PDF
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