Teaching English through games,

stories, rhymes, and songs

Methods in teaching English as a
foreign language
 The importance of using games
• While playing together students interact with each
other and develop their language skills.
• They use vocabulary and structures embedded in a
natural context with a focus on meaning and message
since they are preoccupied with the goal of the game.
• Motivation is enhanced while pronunciation, structures
and vocabulary are practiced and internalised.
• Games help language acquisition and foster
subconscious learning alongside helping children
socialise, learn communication skills and build
strategies.
 The nature of games
• A game is usually considered an activity with rules unlike
play which is free.
• A game must have a goal and there is always an element of
fun in it.
• In order for a game to be meaningful and effective in the
process of English language learning with younger learners,
the game should be well organized.
• The procedure of the game may be explained in the mother
tongue with very young learners or in the target language
but it is advisable to demonstrate before pupils how the
game works.
• Asking feedback from students whether they understand
the rules of the game is a good teaching strategy.
 Types of games according to the way
they are organised
• Competitive games in which students work in 2 or
more teams and the aim is to be the first to reach the
goal. Why? - life is full of competition so children
should be prepared for it.
• Cooperative games involve players in working together
towards a common goal, since shy and introvert pupils
may feel bad about competing and may be very
unhappy after losing a game which has nothing to do
with fun.
• Advice: with younger learners organise games that end
up with a win-win situation, games in which there are
no losers.
 Types of games according to their
focus
• Linguistic (code-control) - focus on
pronunciation, grammar, functions,
vocabulary, e.g. ‘Chinese whispers’
• Communicative (fluency oriented) - allow
greater freedom in terms of spontaneity of
language use, e.g. ‘Find the differences’ or
‘Model making’ – children make models from
paper following teacher’s instructions.
 Types of games according to the
technique used
• guessing games
• information gap games
• search games (deciphering secret messages)
• matching games
• arranging games (sequencing or ordering)
• memory games
 Types of games according to the
materials used
• Games with flashcards (e.g. Odd one out)
• Card games (e.g. Pelmanism)
• Board games (with dice or a counter)
• Ball games
• Games with posters (point to…/ show me…)
• Games with puppets
 Reasons for using stories
• Apart from their obvious link with literature, stories bring
about other important cross-curricular links. They help
students develop their understanding of history and
narratives of the past, and promote a positive attitude to
different countries, races and religions.
• They allow students to explore their own cultural roots and
compare and possibly share this knowledge with
representatives of other cultures.
• By being actively engaged in listening to stories and telling
stories themselves, students participate in the construction of
meaning and its interpretation, - an essential skill for their
intellectual growth.
 Stories and language learning
• Listening to stories in English can be very beneficial as
it provides regular exposure to the target language in
order to gain knowledge and confidence in a relaxed,
pleasant and stress-free atmosphere. Stories have
numerous affective benefits for children’s social and
emotional development.
• The importance of storytelling for language learning is
due to the natural introduction and repetition of key
vocabulary and structures in context. Listening to
stories develops children’s prediction skills due to
familiarity or predictability of the context.
 Selection of stories
• Probably the most important requirement for a story is that
it is appropriate for the particular learners. It is a good idea
to find stories children like or are familiar with, such as
popular folk stories, stories about animals or fairy tales.
Stories with a simple structure and logically sequenced
repetitive episodes are probably the best for beginners or
very young children. A well-developed, possibly familiar
plot, standardised characterisation of the main characters,
clear conflict between good and evil, dramatic appeal and
a strong emotional content will make a story more
attractive for young listeners. It is important to emphasise
the positive values and the moral of the story by letting
students feel it rather than explicitly telling them about it.
 Selection of stories
• If the story is not familiar to the students the teacher might
give them some cultural or historical background to it or of
the country of its origin. Rhyme and rhythm can make it
more enjoyable and in a way easier for children to listen to,
predict and remember the content of the story. Intonation
patterns, usually repeated and exaggerated by the teacher
will help develop children’s pronunciation. Natural
repetition of vocabulary and structural patterns will
provide good practice of the target language and will
develop children’s memory skills. It will give them
confidence in further telling the story themselves in both
an accurate and fluent way. With younger children it is
important to provide some illustrations to support their
understanding.
 Useful techniques in storytelling
• using repetition for creating emphasis, e.g. ‘The evening
came and the evening went but she did not come.’, or ‘He
crawled and crawled and crawled…’;
• using rhetorical questions for ‘voicing’ the character’s
thoughts, e.g.: ‘How could that be?’;
• using exclamations for conveying emotions, e.g.: ‘What a
house!’;
• using personalisation by relating the events in the story to
the listeners’ own experience, e.g.: ‘Have you ever seen…?’ or
‘You know what it is like when…’;
• varying the pitch and the volume of the voice for creating
dramatic effect, like whispering or shouting (where
appropriate);
 More useful techniques
• varying pacing by slowing down, speeding up or pausing as
appropriate for calming, building up tension or creating suspense;
• using language that involves as many senses as possible, such as
imitating sounds or using words suggesting sounds or movement,
e.g. ‘The thunder crashed and cracked, and rumbled and cracked
again’, or ‘The wild wind whipped the trees and tossed the chickens
around the yard’. Language like this not only brings the story to life
but also appeals to different types of listeners: visual, auditory,
kinesthetic, etc. (see Multiple Intelligences) The teacher should not
be worried if the children do not understand the exact meaning of
all these words; it is enough to create the desirable effect;
• making the story interactive by involving the listeners through
stopping and checking predictions, e.g. ‘And what do you think
happened next? Yes, that’s exactly what happened.’
 Comprehension check activities
• The teacher has to be very careful not to spoil the
effect and the artistic value of the story by imposing
some immediate comprehension check tasks. Children
could be asked to answer some yes/no or wh-
questions or decide if some statements are true or
false. This could be done with the whole story or
alternatively, different groups can work on different
parts of the story. Another possible activity is to find
and correct mistakes or arrange mixed-up episodes in
the correct way. There is a variety of matching
activities that can be used, such as matching
characters with phrases they have said, things they
have done or qualities they possess.
 Language and skills developing
exercises
• new vocabulary can be organised in lexical, rhyming or
grammatical sets;
• pattern practice drills can be used with some of the
repeated phrases, e.g. ‘Who’s been sleeping in my
bed?’
• Students can listen and arrange pictures, or listen and
draw, following a description;
• Information gap activities with missing information
which students have to complete and then read out
the reconstructed text of the story;
• Reconstructing the story or parts of it from key words;
• Rewriting, summarising or paraphrasing the story
 Creative activities
• telling the further adventures of a character;
• telling an episode or the whole story from a character’s
point of view;
• giving a modern version of the story;
• telling what happened before the story started;
• making predictions about what can happen next in the
story;
• writing a follow-up or a different ending;
• writing a diary of a character or a letter;
• illustrating an episode – drawing a map and marking
the route of a character’s journey;
 Songs, rhymes, riddles and tongue-
twisters
• They are used to develop the psycholinguistic skills –
listening, reading, writing and speaking – in an
integrated way. They provide a natural context for
reinforcing supra-segmental features of speech such as
stress and intonation, and foster the acquisition of the
rhythm of the English language. Culture is also taught
implicitly through them. All of these activities can cross
the boundaries of the English lesson and be taken
home by children to share with their family or on the
playground, to perform before their friends. This in
turn encourages a feeling of achievement and success
which builds children’s confidence as language users.
 Why do we use them?
• Songs, poems and rhymes, riddles and tongue twisters are
natural fun activities that children adore and like doing in
the process of acquiring and learning their mother tongue.
This makes them appropriate ingredients of the foreign
language classroom.
• The professional challenge for teachers is to pick up the
right time in the lesson for teaching some of these fun
activities and to apply the right techniques so that children
enjoy the process of learning.
• Teaching songs, rhymes, riddles and tongue twisters is
amusing and rewarding because they meet the needs and
expectations of pupils with different kinds of intelligences:
musical, spatial, linguistic, etc.
 When do we teach songs
• Songs are multi-functional as education tools in the foreign
language classroom. They can be used successfully as tune-
in and warm-up activities at the beginning of a lesson to
bridge a topic or a pattern studied previously to its
extension.
• At any time during a lesson when a teacher feels that the
energy level has dropped and children need a bit of a
sparkle and change in the rhythm of the lesson, they may
resort to a good song provided children like it and it is
logically linked to what they have been doing.
• Songs are frequently used as a wind-down of a very
energetic lesson or to finish on an upbeat note after hard,
concentrated work on a sad, serious text about endangered
species for example.
 Types of songs used in class
• Action songs – e.g. ‘Head and shoulders’, ‘This
is the way’
• Cumulative songs – e.g. ‘One finger, one
thumb, keep moving’, ‘Ten green bottles’
• Counting songs – e.g. ‘1,2,3,4,5, Once I caught
a fish alive’
• Circular songs – e.g. ‘London’s burning’
• Traditional songs – e.g. ‘Jingle bells’
 Techniques for teaching songs
• Students should not be compelled or forced to sing - mental
singing is equally effective.
• The most typical way of introducing a song in English to young
learners is to work in a lockstep fashion with the whole class.
• It is preferable to play the song first for children to get immersed in
its melody, or even play it several times in previous lessons just for
children to enjoy the melody and get used to it and then the
teacher may negotiate with children whether they like it and if they
want to learn the lyrics.
• If it is a short song, the holistic approach is suitable because
teaching a line at a time may ruin the spontaneity.
• With longer songs the teacher may adopt a step by step approach
and even teach the song in several parts during a few consecutive
lessons, building and expanding the song.
 More techniques
• Visual aids may be used to contextualise the
teaching of a given song.
• Jigsaw listening can be used - different groups
listen to a different part of the song and then get
together to reconstruct the whole song.
• ‘A wipe out’ song technique - each time children
sing the song, the teacher erases one line of the
song.
• Gap-filling – listen and fill in the gaps.
• Spotting and correcting mistakes.
 Teaching poems and rhymes
• Most of the rhymes, especially the traditional
nursery rhymes that are taught to children
whose mother tongue is English as well can
also be sung as songs, e.g.
• Twinkle, twinkle little star,
• How I wonder what you are.
• Up above the world so high,
• Like a diamond in the sky.
 Rhymes - riddles
• As I was going to St Ives;
• I met a man with seven wives;
• Each wife had seven sacks,
• Each sack had seven cats;
• Each cat had seven kits:
• Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
• How many were going to St. Ives?
 Traditional poems
• Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home
• Your house is on fire, your children are gone. All except
one; her name is Ann
• And she has crept under the frying pan.
• Or:
• Two Easter bunnies sitting at the gate,
• One named Peter, one named Kate.
• Hop away Peter, hop away Kate. (hide bunnies behind
back)
• Come back, Peter, come back Kate. (show bunnies
again)
 Teaching riddles
• ‘I’m colourful and beautiful. I have wings. I like
flowers. What am I?’
• Or: ‘I’m big and brown. I live in the forest. I
love berries and honey. What am I?’
• Riddles can be simple but they can be loaded
with more language and the degree of
difficulty can be changed according to the
level of the pupils’ language proficiency and
the objectives of a given lesson.
 Using tongue-twisters
• Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
• A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked;
• If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
• Where’s the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper
picked?
• Or: ‘The fat cat sat on a mat’
• ‘The fat cat chased a rat’
• ‘Thick thorns thrive thoughtlessly’
• ‘Silky snakes hiss in the grass’.
 Recommended reading
• Rixon, S. 1981. How to Use Games in Language Teaching, London:
Macmillan.
• Scott, W. & L. Ytreberg. 1993. Teaching English to Children, Longman
• Stronin, M.F. 1984. Teaching Games in the English Language Classroom,
Moscow, Prosveshtenie.
• Watcyn-Jones, P. 1997. Top Class Activities, 50 Fun Games and Activities
• Hughes, A. 1992. Teaching Songs and Rhymes, Jet magazine.
• Maley, A. & A. Duff. 1989. The Inward Ear. Poetry in the language
classroom. CUP
• Miyahara, M. 2005. Systematic Storytelling, English Teaching professional,
Issues 36/ 37.
• Ozcalli S. 2002. Successful storytelling, English Teaching Professional, Issue
23, p.23-25.