As teachers we can incorporate our interests into our classes. As a freelance teacher, I love incorporating videogames and board games into my teaching when I have students that share the same interest.
Years ago when I was teaching at an institute I came across a simple but effective resource. It was simply a drawing of an office, and the title at the top of the page was Memory Test.
Seeing the page got my creative juices flowing, and I created a memory test that incorporated the prepositions of location, office vocabulary, and there is/there are.
I still have that activity, and it works nicely with adults that are learning general English, business English, or preparing for TOEIC.
I decided to take the same idea and incorporate scenes from videogames. Some of my students are big fans of the Super Mario series, so that was my next experiment.
Here are some photos from the PowerPoint:
We went through each word in the list one by one, and as we looked at the picture I said things like “There’s a piranha plant in the corner of the screen!” and “Oh look! Mario just scored 400 points!”. They served as clues about what student should look out for.
In the end I think the last question was too difficult, but if I use the activity again I know that I can change some of the questions to multiple choice.
In any case, something like this can be adapted for any topic: a busy picture that is common in ESL materials, a picture of a current event, a photo of an office, etc. The vocabulary and complexity of the questions can also be adjusted based on the level of the students and their learning goals.
Have you used anything like this in your classes? Do you have any thoughts about using this in your classes? If so, leave a comment below and let me know how it went.
