Games for teaching sounds
We’ve been looking at activities for teaching pronunciation.
Games can also be e"ective teaching tools. First let’s consider
the di"erence between an activity and a game.
Games have an element of competition—between individuals,
between teams, or even with individuals competing against
their own past performance. Games have rules that need to
be followed, and there are usually winners and losers (or to
be kind, we could say “non-winners.”) In activities that are
not games, the main purpose is not to win, but to accomplish
a purpose. Everybody can succeed at the same time. Even
though some students may be checking their own work
against that of others to see who is doing the best, the main
point is not competition.
You can turn many activities into games by adding an
element of competition. Divide the class into teams and have
them take turns doing bits of practice: Read words with
correct pronunciation, identify which sound they hear, think
of a word that rhymes with a given word, list words starting
with a given sound, or many other possibilities. Whether you
count points or award prizes is up to you. (A round of
applause can be a great prize, and it’s free!)
You can turn many common games into pronunciation
teaching tools. For example:Bingo: Make Bingo grids with minimal pairs using vowels or
consonants, or pairs of words that are the same except for
stress. (See the example near the end of this chapter. The
basic rules of Bingo are given there.) For additional practice,
students can take turns calling the Bingo words.Card games: Children’s card games like Go Fish and Crazy
Eights can be used to practice pronunciation if we make
cards with pictures of objects that contain the sounds you
want to practice instead of the usual hearts, diamonds, clubs,
and spades. Look here for instructions for basic card games:
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/card-games.Concentration: This is a game played with cards that
match up in pairs: A word and its meaning, a picture and its
word, etc. The cards are set out upside down. Players take
turns choosing two cards to see if they match. If they do, they
are left face up and the player gets a point. If they don’t
match, they’re turned upside down again and the next player
chooses two cards. The object of the game is to !nd as many
matching pairs as possible.Board games: Find or make a game board with spaces
leading from the !rst to the last space. Write questions or
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