Ever used a Trojan Horse in your teaching?

1. English Games To Play
2. Good Games To Play Online
3. Fun Games To Play On Computer Free
4. Fun Web Games To Play

While there’s really not much about the Trojan War that you’d want to emulate in a classroom, the old story of the Trojan Horse can be a helpful metaphor.

Just like the sneaky Greek army, you can hide important English lessons inside something exciting that your students will want.

And there’s no need to build a giant wooden horse to pull it off.

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Whether you need to teach parts of speech, sentence structure or just provide fresh opportunities for English conversation, there are fun ESL games that can provide it all.

The following games are fun little English lesson Trojan horses. We’ll show you the basics of implementing them, plus tips for adapting them to your specific teaching goals.

1. A Walk in His/Her Shoes

This activity is great for an elementary to intermediate level class. The game tests students’ knowledge of adjectives regarding physical appearance, verbal phrases to explain hobbies and clothing items, among other things.

For lower level classes, start with some review of vocabulary in the categories of jobs, clothing items and activities. Students can raise their hands to contribute vocabulary words as the teacher keeps lists on the board.

For higher level students, open the lesson with the question: What does it mean to “walk a mile in someone’s shoes?” With any luck a short discussion on the merits of empathy will ensue.

After the short warm up, divide the class into groups of two. Give each pair of students a picture of a pair of shoes; for example, a photo of red high heels or purple rain boots. Then, instruct the class to imagine the person who owns that pair of shoes.

They must describe this person in detail. They should use adjectives to describe the person’s physical appearance and verbs in their proper tense to describe what the person does for work and in their leisure time.

The students should write down a full description of the person using proper grammar and word forms.

For more advanced students and more sentence structure practice, the students can write a small story about the character they’ve imagined. Toward the end of the lesson or during the next lesson, each pair of students must present their person to the rest of the class.

Tip: Before class, prepare a list of questions the students should answer regarding their imagined person. Questions might include “Where does this person live?” or “What does this person eat for lunch?” The questions can be tailored to focus on specific vocabulary.

2. Mad Libs

This is the ultimate parts of speech game. Teachers can buy Mad Libs books online, but they can also create their own. This game requires students to look closely at the positioning of different parts of speech and what makes up a sentence.

Each Mad Lib tells a short anecdote or story. Within the story, several of the words are missing. “Noun,” “adjective,” “name,” “adverb,” “color,” “food,” or some other part of speech or category is written under each blank space in the story. The students must fill in the missing parts of speech, which are then used to complete the story.

The fact that words get filled in before students hear any context has two benefits:

• You can first focus exclusively on parts of speech and how they’re used.
• The completed stories are bound to be funny and grab students’ attention!

Mad Libs can be done as a class with one student standing in the front of the room and asking for the missing words from his or her classmates. Once he or she writes in all the missing words he or she should read the story aloud to the class.

It can also be done in small groups of four or five students. One student in each group holds the story and asks his or her classmates for the missing words, then reads the completed story to the group. Toward the end of the lesson, encourage the groups to share their stories with the whole class.

Tip: The results are often silly. Occasionally a Mad Lib won’t make sense with the words the students chose. In this case, it’s important to have the students look at the sentence more closely and discuss why the chosen word doesn’t work.

3. Story Chains (Also Known as Fold-over Stories)

Story chains are a fun and easy way for more advanced students to review storytelling devices, and for lower level students to practice using the past tense. This game requires little preparation and can be used as a warm up or cool down activity.

Each student takes a loose piece of paper and writes the opening sentence to a story. Remind the students that when telling a story, they should use the past tense.

The teacher may offer prompts such as, “Write one sentence that introduces the main character.” Then the students fold the top of their paper over so that it can’t be seen and pass their papers to the student next to them. The next line in the story might have to do with setting, then an obstacle the character encounters, etc.

Continue to fold and pass the story until you reach the desired story length. Everyone should unfold the story in front of them and read it to the class.

Tip: The teacher can adapt the instructions to focus on specific devices or parts of speech, such as, “Use a prepositional phrase to explain where the character lives.”

4. Who Am I?

This game helps students become comfortable asking questions in English, with the added benefit of getting them up, moving and speaking to one another.

Each student writes down the name of a famous person or celebrity. The teacher collects the names, folds them and mixes them up. Then the teacher redistributes them to the class. Without reading the name of the celebrity, the students should hold the paper on their foreheads so others can see it.

The students should mix and mingle, asking their classmates one yes-or-no question at a time to try to guess who they are.

Questions can be as simple or as complicated as necessary. For example, a student might start by asking a classmate, “Am I a woman or a man?” and work toward questions such as “Was I in the last Batman movie?” The first student to successfully guess which celebrity he or she is wins.

Tip: The teacher should circulate to make sure the students are using the correct verb tenses and word forms in their questions and answers.

5. Extreme Situations (Also Known as You’re Stranded on a Desert Island…)

This game is best for advanced students. It requires students to read, reason, debate and persuade. Students are divided into pairs or small groups. They’re given a scenario in which they’re stranded on an island with five other people. They discover a boat on the island but there’s only room for the students in the group and two of the other five people. The students must choose which one to save.

Each of the five people on the island have a story, which makes the process of deciding challenging and invites debate. For example, perhaps Person 1 is a single father from New York City and Person 2 is only 22 years old, but she cheated her way into medical school, while Person 3 is almost seventy and just lost his wife, Person 4 is a best selling author and Person 5 is just a regular guy who sometimes drinks too much.

Who gets saved and who’ll be left on the island?

Students have to discuss and convince their classmates who should be saved. The whole group must agree. Once each group comes to a consensus, the students should share their results with the class. The teacher can ask follow up questions such as, “Was it hard to come to an agreement? Why?”

Tip: The teacher should type up and print out the scenario and short (one-paragraph) biographies for the five people on the island. The teacher may also create other scenarios in which the students have to debate moral and ethical issues.

Games can be a great tool in the ESL classroom. Students at every level and age will have a blast with these games for sentence structure and parts of speech practice.

For review, test prep or just a bit of fun, work these games into your lesson plans. Your students will be grateful for the variety and the chance to practice what they’ve learned in a new and interesting way!

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Online games to practice English changed everything for a friend of mine.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

My friend just couldn’t get anywhere with English class. He’s a French speaker from Canada and was studying English as a second language in school. It seemed no matter how many times he reviewed his notes and did his homework, he wasn’t able to improve.

Eventually, he stopped spending so much time studying English and just started playing online English games instead.

Many English learners have had this experience. Maybe you have, too.

The good news is that playing ESL games turned out to be the best choice my friend could’ve made for his language skills.

As he played, he’d spend hours using English to talk to his teammates and opponents in the game. And you know what? He started learning how to hold English conversations with people!

After a short while, he was using English confidently and more naturally.

This is because one of the best ways for you to learn English is to turn your hobbies into language-learning experiences. It makes English practice fun, exciting and valuable to you. It helps you to memorize vocabulary words and practice speaking and writing in English in a way that’s both fun and educational.

In this post, we’ll get you started with ten excellent, interactive online games to practice English.

We’ll start with some that were developed especially for language learners. Then we’ll show you how to practice English online just like my friend did, with multiplayer English games that native speakers play.

Educational Online Games to Practice English

Educational English games can be hit or miss (either great or terrible). In other words, they’re either really fun to play, or they’re extremely boring.

That’s why we’ve picked out the best ESL games for you. The games below were created specifically to help English language learners improve their skills. Not only does this give you focused language practice, but it also ensures you’re practicing at the right level for your skills.

The Grammar of Doom from GameZone

The Grammar of Doom is an adventure-style game where you explore secrets hidden within an old, magical temple. To get an idea of the game, imagine if Indiana Jones taught your English class.

English Games To Play

There are a total of 10 rooms in the temple, and each room has its own series of puzzles that you have to solve using English. In order to move to the next room and eventually beat the game, you have to use your grammar and vocabulary skills to create English sentences and solve these puzzles.

Wordshake

If you like action-packed ESL games that have you working against the clock, Wordshake is right for you.

This game gives you 16 random letters of the alphabet and three minutes. During that time, you have to come up with as many English words as you can using the letters you have, and every time you make a new word, you get a point.

The letters don’t have to touch each other or be in a particular pattern like they do in crossword puzzles, and you’re able to select letters in any order.

Since there aren’t any complicated rules with Wordshake, it’s a good vocabulary-building game for beginners and advanced students alike.

FluentU

FluentU transforms authentic, entertaining English videos into fun online games to practice English.

You’ll get to watch movie trailers, music videos, inspiring talks and more, with interactive elements to keep your language skills sharp.

There are many different types of videos, as you can see here:

FluentU makes it easy to watch and understand native English videos with interactive captions. Tap or click on any word to see what it means, learn how to use it, hear it pronounced and more.

For example, if you tap on the word “brought,” then you see this:

You can learn any video’s vocabulary with FluentU’s fun quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.

The videos are organized by genre and level, so it’s super easy to find the ones that work for you. FluentU also keeps track of your learning, then suggests videos and examples perfect for you.

Start using FluentU on the website or download the FluentU app from the iTunes store or Google Play store.

Beat the Keeper

Beat the Keeper is a quiz-style online game to practice English where you have 90 seconds to answer as many sports-related questions as you can. The theme of this game is soccer, and every time you answer a question, your character takes a shot at the goal. If you answer the question correctly, you make the goal. If you’re wrong, the goalkeeper blocks your shot.

Great for building sports vocabulary, Beat the Keeper is a fun and unique approach to learning English. And since it has an easy, medium and difficult setting, it’s also suitable for language learners of all levels.

ESL Crossword Puzzles

Good Games To Play Online

Crossword puzzles are great for people who like a challenge, and for English language learners, they’re a good way to test your reading comprehension and vocabulary skills.

However, the crossword puzzles that you find in the Sunday newspaper are often too hard for English learners to complete. (Many of them are even too difficult for native English speakers who aren’t good at trivia, or general knowledge questions.)

Fortunately, with ESL Crossword Puzzles, you can challenge yourself with word problems that were created especially for English language learners.

The website is comprehensive and has a variety of crossword puzzles and difficulties to choose from, making it great for students of all skill levels. Just choose your level from the menu at the top of the ESL Crossword Puzzles homepage linked above.

What’s especially helpful is that you’re also able to choose from various themes, including:

Fun Games To Play On Computer Free

• Common words in English (easy)
• Medical vocabulary (intermediate)
• English words from other languages (advanced)

Freerice

Freerice is another quiz-style game that helps you improve your vocabulary skills. Instead of answering word problems, you’re given a vocabulary word and then have to find its closest synonym out of four different words.

The game starts out easy, but with 60 levels in total, it gets much harder as you go along.

Fun Web Games To Play

What really makes Freerice different than other online games to practice English is that the company will donate 10 grains of rice to hungry families for every question that you answer right. So the more you play, the more you’re helping those in need.

Authentic English Games for Language Practice

Along with the educational English games we just covered, you can also use authentic games that native English speakers play.

And since many of these games have multiplayer options with text and voice chat, having English conversations with your friends is easier than ever.

We’ll start off with a popular language-focused board game, then three exciting video games that English speakers love.

Scrabble Online

Scrabble might not be a game designed specifically for learning English, but it’s a great way to test your vocabulary knowledge with friends. Originally designed as a board game, you can now play Scrabble online with friends or against the computer.

The rules to Scrabble are simple. You grab seven letter squares and use them to make words. All tiles touching one another have to make a real English word, and you have to build words off of other words that’ve already been laid down. Every square has a letter and number written on it that represents the points that you get for using that letter.

As you play online, you can chat with the other players. Just type messages in the chat space to the right of the Scrabble board.

And remember, Scrabble can get very challenging towards the end, even for native English speakers. So don’t become frustrated if you struggle to make a word and have to pass on a turn. It happens to all of us!

Call of Duty

The Call of Duty series includes some of the most popular action games of all time. In these games, you play the role of a soldier, where you and your team work together to defeat the other team.

The Call of Duty games also come with a voice chat feature where you can chat, make jokes and come up with strategies with your teammates—or have conversations with anyone before and after a game starts. This is a great opportunity to practice English skills that you might not get from the classroom, like:

• Listening to different English accents, including accents of other second-language speakers
• Learning informal English and slang
• Becoming more accustomed to speakers who naturally talk quickly or slowly

League of Legends

League of Legends is a free adventure game where teams work together to complete various quests. The game has a built-in chat feature, where you can talk to people using text. But since a large portion of the game requires communicating with your teammates, a lot of people like supplementing the game with voice chat programs like Discord or TeamSpeak to talk to one another.

If your friends already have a Discord channel, simply ask them for the address to join. Otherwise, you can create your own by downloading the program and following the easy-to-understand instructions and then link them to your chatroom.

VRChat

VRChat isn’t like any other game that you’ve ever played before. In fact, it’s more like a chatroom with a video game world built into it—you even help create the world!

Simply choose your character and chat with thousands of people from across the world using text or voice chat. You’ll get to explore more than 1,000 virtual worlds and talk with new people while doing so.

Have Fun and Practice Your English

There are a number of online games to practice English with, no matter what your hobbies and interests are. Next time you want to sit down and play a game, try turning it into an English-speaking activity. That way, you’ll be practicing English without it even feeling like work.

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to learn English with real-world videos.