Activities ideas for teaching English in Thailand
Activities are a must for teaching English in Thailand. It’s difficult enough for Thai students to learn a new language, but it is even worse when the process to learn the language is dull and uninspiring. Lecture is needed to teach students the basics of the English language, but activities are required to show them how the language can be applied to real life situations. Teaching English as a second language in different countries will require different kinds of activities that the students of that country can relate to. There are assorted activities that you can use to teach English in Thailand. Here are some of them: 1.) Pictionary—This picture game can be played with different age groups. You only have to make few changes to the words to make them easier (or harder). There might be different versions of this game, but the commonly known version is for a player to pick a word from a hat, draw the word out on the board and let the other player guess what that word is. The teacher can prepare the word lists, cut them out, roll them and place them in a bag for the student to draw out. This game can be played in pairs, but if the class is big and there’s limited time, let them play as a small group. So maybe have one student draw out the hints of the picked word and let three or four other students try to guess what that secret word is. 2.) Charade—Similar to Pictionary but instead of drawing, you act out the word. So if the student picked out Godzilla, let see they try to imitate Godzilla movement! 3.) Telephone—also known as Grapevines and Chinese Whispers. So you will have the whole class stand in line. You whisper the word to the student next to you and let him or her pass it on until the end of the line and the very last person say the word out loud. Chances are the whispered word will be altered severely by the time it reaches the last person. 4.) Music and movie—Select a popular English music and open it for the students. Translate the lyrics and they’ll learn new vocabulary. Movie is another good choice. Select a few scenes with interesting dialogue and learn new words from there. 5.) Create a short story with illustrations—What better ways to bring out a person’s language ability than writing a story. Remember those children picture books you used to read as a child? They are perfect example of combining creative writing and art. Have students form several small groups and hand them a list of tasks. One person can do the writing, another does the drawing, another can do the coloring, and the fourth one can be responsible for coming with a plot for the story. The story can be based on simple plot and sentences. Get them busy, get them writing. 6.) Name, place, animal, and things—You can try this game with the whole class, although it works better if the class is not too big in which case feel free to divide the students into groups. In this game, either the teacher or the student can pick one random alphabet. For example, if the chosen alphabet is “S” then the entire class has to come up with a Name, a Place, an Animal, and a Thing that begins with the letter “S”. For instance— Name: Samantha, Place: Singapore, Animal: Swan, Thing: Saucepan. It gets more difficult with the letter “X” and “Q”. After the students wrote down all their words, add up the scores. If the students wrote down the word correctly, they get a 10. If they repeated the same word as the friend next to them, they get a 5. If they couldn’t think of a word, it’s a zero. Or, you can just omit the scoring part altogether and just have fun with the game.