5 WAYS to MAKE English PRACTICE & REVISION Really EXCITING & FUN

It is no news that practising a language with games makes boring work much more fun and as a result much more effective, too. 

I am always trying to create opportunities to practise the language in a motivating manner and although I had already mentioned using random wheels such as those of Wheeldecide, I have recently been caught up in such a frenzy of wheel creation, inspired by the enthusiasm of my students of all levels & ages, that I thought I should share some of them here, in the hope of inspiring you to create more of these fun wheels.

1 - END OF YEAR REVISION
(or as a STARTER for the new school year)

The last days of school are always difficult to manage with everyone tired & looking forward to the holidays. So I devised a game with a wheel of random questions based on the content of the class book (in this case DIGITAL ENGLISH FILE ELEMENTARY & INTERMEDIATE) for my adult evening class students.

Easy to play: hit the wheel & take turns in answering the questions.

It was a great success with my normally not so easy to engage adults & at the end of the game everyone had practised speaking various times whilst revising a year's content. Would make a great starter revision activity at the beginning of the year, too.

Create your own wheel based on your classbook or wheeldecide.com or feel free to use mine:

2 - TENSE REVISION

​Combining two wheels can provide endless combinations of effective, fun learning.

Take my TENSE REVISION WHEEL and combine it with a wheel you make specific to vocabulary or expressions you are studying (for example a DAILY ROUTINE WHEEL). 

Then spin them both: get students to say (and perhaps write for consolidation) what comes out: 
SIMPLE PAST + GET UP = Yesterday I GOT UP late.
PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS + WAKE UP = I HAVE BEEN WAKING UP in the middle of the night recently.

As you can see, the game can be useful for all age-groups & ranges of ability.

3 - FREQUENCY ADVERBS & CHORES

​Similarly for elementary students needing to practise frequency adverbs & simple present tense, my 3 wheel game can be an effective way of repeating the sentence structures until they become second nature: 


Spin the SUBJECT PRONOUN WHEEL , FREQUENCY ADVERB WHEEL & CHORES WHEEL and say or write what appears paying attention to the third person:
He always sweeps the floor.
We never do the washing up.


Add a fourth wheel, the AFFIRMATIVE-NEGATIVE-QUESTION WHEEL, for a complete cycle of sentence structure training.

4 - GETTING TO KNOW YOU
​
This wheel can be made for various age groups & used at the beginning of the year as a class or even better in pairs (on tablet or mobile phone). I also used it at the end of my school year as a way of consolidating acquired knowledge with primary school children.

5 - VOCABULARY RECOGNITION IN PICTURE
​
Choose a detailed picture (for children I like those for the Cambridge Starters exam - yle-starters-word-list-picture-book) and teach the vocabulary, verbs & expressions.

Then write them on a wheel, spin & have the children identify the various words & expressions but showing them to you in the picture.

Remember to click the option to make the wedges on the wheel disappear if you don't want to repeat them.

Let the WHEELDECIDE and have lots of fun!!

Please add any ideas of your own in the comments.

Follow these tips and enjoy helping people learn English easily!!

​Your English fluency teacher,

Susan