The activities on this site are designed to encourage meaningful use of language. Here, we describe a variety of common activities that you will find on the LCTL DOORs website.
In order to make the best use of your time with your students, we recommend that you focus on meaning-based, communicative activities in class. Reserve vocabulary activities for out of class practice.
Discourse Scrambles
In a discourse scramble, students must unscramble a piece of text to put it in a logical order. These pieces of texts could be as short as a sentence, a paragraph, or several paragraphs. These activities require deep reading comprehension and foster students’ awareness of the logical connections within texts. These activities can be done using paper, or, if you’re working online, you could use H5P.
Information Gap Activities
Information gap activities encourage spontaneous, meaningful communication among students, and they can be adapted to fit any level. In some types of info gap activities, students work in pairs and are given the role of either Student A or Student B. Each student is given a worksheet with different pieces of information removed. They must talk with each other to get the information they need. In others, students fill out a worksheet with their own information and have to obtain other students’ information. To see an example of how an information gap activity works, visit this site.
Picture Stories
In picture story activities, students are presented with a set of images that tell a visual story. Either in writing or orally, students should use the images to tell a story. This type of activity encourages students to use their imagination and linguistic resources to produce a story independently. These types of activities may prompt students to try out new vocabulary or structures. If you wish to do this activity orally, consider using Flipgrid. For a written assignment, you have a number of options. You could use your LMS’s discussion board function, an H5P short answer question, or a paper submission.
Listening Activities
There is a variety of listening activities, ranging from exercises focusing on the connection between sound and spelling, to vocabulary practice through listening, to meaning-based questions based on more extended audio clips. In order to develop oral fluency and strong listening comprehension in the language, all of these activity types are necessary. Please note that users need to make recordings of listening activities on this site. To do this, you could use a number of strategies such as Audacity or the recording tool on your phone or computer. These activities can then be uploaded to an H5P activity.
Speaking activities
These activities are a mix between interpersonal speaking activities, in which students interact orally, and presentational speaking activities, in which individual students present information orally. Some of the interpersonal activities overlap with the information gap activities described above. Flipgrid and Padlet are both good options for online platforms where students can post videos of themselves and then make video comments on other students’ work.
Vocabulary Activities
Vocabulary knowledge is a foundational part of all language comprehension and use. In order to know a word, students must know its spelling and pronunciation (also called its form), its meaning, and how it is used (Nation, 2013). Our vocabulary activities are meant to help students practice vocabulary at these levels, but especially form and meaning. These vocabulary activities can be used as lesson warm-ups to introduce students to words they will need to know, or they can be assigned as homework to encourage vocabulary practice. There are some common vocabulary activity types listed below. In many cases, there are both reading and listening versions of these activities so that students can practice vocabulary through different modalities. For additional vocabulary practice ideas, check out the learning resources page.
There are two main types of spelling activities. In differentiating spelling activities, students are presented with a list of words with a mix of correctly spelled and misspelled words. In unscrambling activities, students have to spell a word correctly based on the mixed up letter presented. The purpose of these activities is to help students practice the spelling of the target words. Being able to do these activities quickly will increase students’ reading fluency, which will enable them to read more quickly and smoothly.
For example:
- Look at the given word and then circle ALL of the words that are identical to it in the list that follows. Go as quickly as you can!
- pen
- pen pen pan pin pan pen
- Look at the scrambled words below and, as quickly as you can, unscramble them to make vocabulary words.
- d/y/s/u/t → study
Students match a vocabulary word with a picture. This is a vocabulary fundamentals activity that is best for students encountering a new word for the first time. These are meant to connect the word with its meaning.
Students are given a sentence that describes the vocabulary word or provides an example of the meaning of the word. In other cases, students are given a longer piece of related text and they must then identify which word would fit. These activities are meant to help students demonstrate that they know the meaning of a word in a more meaning-based way than simply asking for a translation.
For example:
- “Shakul always tells the truth”
- Honest
- Brave
- Smart
- This has four wheels. It can normally carry 5 people. ________ (car)
- Listening clip: Flight 487 is now boarding. Please proceed to gate 60.
- Q: Where would you hear this? A: At the airport
Students are presented with a group or words and must choose the one that does not belong OR students are given a category and must select words that belong. These activities implicitly require students to demonstrate that they understand the meaning of words. This also helps students to develop associations between words.
For example:
- Cross out the word that is NOT a type of transportation
- Bus, Train, Subway,
Ticket
- Bus, Train, Subway,
- Choose the words or phrases that are hobbies:
- play piano, listen to music, eat lunch, dance
In these activities, students must select the opposite of a word. Like the categorizing activities, these implicitly require students to understand the meaning of the words and to create associations.
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