Improvisation Games for Learners of English as a Foreign Language - Dr. Juergen Kurtz

Sorry, but I have not translated my articles (the third one will be published in July 1998) into English yet. But I can give you an impression of how I use improv activities in my FL classes. I use improv games and activities primarily to improve the learners' ability to speak English spontaneously. I have frequently seen that most learners are in trouble when they have to cope with situations in which something unexpected happens. Let me give you an example. Last year I was in England with a group of (teenage) pupils. One day I watched three of them standing in front of a bakery. They wanted to buy something, but they did not go inside because they were not sure what to say. I noticed that they tried to anticipate or plan a "bakery situation" in advance: What can we say when we enter the bakery? What does (...) mean in English? What happens if do not have enough money? Etc. After a while they went in. But after about 30 seconds I saw them coming out of the bakery hastily without having bought anything. In the evening I asked them what went wrong and they told me that something beyond their carefully planned "bakery script" had happened. The woman behind the counter had asked them something they did not understand. So they left the bakery in panic. This made me think about the situational approach to foreign language teaching which is still widespread in Germany. Do we really teach learners to communicate freely? How can we improve their productive skills? They certainly know lots of words and structures, but how can we foster their ability to use these language resources spontaneously? To my mind, improvisation is one solution to this problem. I have personally been in lots of situation in which I had to act and react flexibly, to use gestures instead of words, to paraphrase, etc. This is the main reason why I try to create improv activities for the classroom to induce impromptu communication.

I distinguish between three kinds of activities (warmups, highlights, cooldowns). Every lesson (45 minutes) consists of one of these "modules" which are either competitive or cooperative. The so-called highlights (the most demanding parts of the lessons) are recorded on tape so that we can listen to what the pupils have said and talk about it afterwards. Basically, the feedback sequence is meant to deal with all sorts of communicative problems. From time to time I also invite a native speaker to my classes to give the pupils "more authentic feedback". The whole approach is learner-centered and holistic; input is given when the pupils need it, i.e. when they cannot express what want to say, or when their output is incomprehensible, or when they speak "Germish" (a mix of German and English), etc. Nine to twelve improv lessons represent a curricular unit. Then I continue with other course work. I believe that the best approach to foreign language teaching is using a variety of methods and techniques, so I personally would not spend a whole term (school-year) on improvisation only. Nothing is more boring than a single approach.

Here is a collection of improv activities I have already used in the classroom (translated by my American colleague Stephen Watt who has published these activities in "Englisch" (1997), the German publication I told you about).

Name: Charades
Level: Beginner

Procedure: This is one of the staples of improvisation, and is often played as a game at parties in Britain and the United States. To play "Charades", divide your class into at least two teams (hereafter referred to as teams A and B). Each team should suggest words (or phrases) that the other team will have to act out. To start the game off, send one member of team A (the actor) to the front of the classroom, where he or she should receive one of the words that team B wrote down. The actor must then act out the word, without saying anything. The remaining members of team A attempt to guess what the word is, based on their teammate's actions within a one to two minute time-limit. Once the word has been guessed correctly, or the time has expired, it is team B's turn to play. It should be noted, that while team A is trying to guess a word team B must remain silent, and vice versa. Over-eager students sometimes try to guess the words for both teams. The game is over when all of the words written down by teams A and B have been acted out. The team that guesses the most words correctly wins.

Variations: (1) "Charades" can also be used as an alternative vocabulary exercise. Instead of each team coming up with words from their own personal vocabularies, have them choose words from the vocabulary of the unit you are currently working on. To help your students learn and remember linguistic terminology, it is also a good idea to have students announce whether the word they are about to perform is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. (2) A beginning to intermediate version of "Charades" has students come up with various film, music, theater and book titles that each team must act out. Each improvisation begins with the student indicating which artistic medium the title he or she is about to perform belongs to. To do this the class must decide beforehand on a series of gestures to indicate each of these artistic mediums, for instance, pretending to run a camera for film, or mimicking an opera singer for music.

Comment: "Charades" is a wonderful means of getting students to practice their vocabulary. The advantage of practicing vocabulary using "Charades" is that it moves the students away from simply translating the word from their mother tongue into the target language. Instead, students are encouraged to associate English words with particular actions and emotions, much like a native speaker might do.

Name: Senseless Dialog
Level: Beginner

Procedure: Two students are given a short dialog to perform. The dialog itself should be relatively vague and open-ended, so that it only achieves a particular meaning through the students' performance. A sample dialog between a customer returning a defective item, and the salesperson at the complaint department might look like this:

Customer: Hello.

Salesperson: Good afternoon. How may I help you?

Customer: I'd like to return this.

Salesperson: What's wrong with it?

Customer: It's broken. Can't you tell?

Salesperson: Hmmm ...

Customer: Well, it wasn't working this morning.

Salesperson: I'll see what I can do.

Comment: In contrast to having students concentrate on ritualized greetings and commonly used phrases as the basis for successful communication (as might be practiced in a simulation) this improvisational activity gets students to recognize the significance of intonation and expression in communicating. By doing this activity, students can see that it is not only what a person says, but also how he or she says it that determines how it is to be understood. To further underscore this, it would be best to have several sets of students play the same dialog, but require that each group perform it somewhat differently. The first group might have the customer be frustrated and the salesman friendly, the next could have the customer be shy and the salesman disinterested, a third pair could have the customer be annoyed and the salesman increasingly apologetic, even to the point of tears. Performed in this way, the activity can contribute to an increasing awareness of the emotional and physical means used in communication.

Name: There's Something in My Soup!
Level: Beginner to intermediate

Procedure: Have each student in your class write a noun on a slip of paper. Collect all of the slips of paper and put them into a bowl. Select two students from the class. One of the students should sit at a table with the 'soup bowl' containing the slips of paper. This student then pulls one of the slips of paper out of the bowl and says, "Waiter, I've got a (noun) in my soup". The second student, the 'waiter', approaches the table and must come up with an appropriate response. Repeat with new sets of students until you have used up all of the slips of paper.

Comment: Aside from reinforcing students' knowledge of particular English nouns, this activity gets students acquainted with the idea of spontaneously producing a sentence in a foreign language. Although students may initially feel uncomfortable coming up with an English sentence on the spur of the moment, it is our impression that with subsequent repetitions of this activity, and others like it, the students will grow more comfortable with improvising in English. A simple scenario, such as "There's Something in My Soup!" can thus help introduce students to the idea of improvisation, and provide a basis for more complex improvisational activities in the classroom.

Name: The Chase
Level: Beginner to intermediate

Procedure: In this game, the teacher starts telling a story (e.g. "I am in New York"). The students are allowed to interrupt at any time during the story and ask questions (e.g. "What do you see?" "The Empire State Building." "Who is coming out of the building?" "King Kong." "Where is he going?" "To the nearest fruit stand.") The teacher has a time-limit as to how long he or she can think about the answer to each of the questions. The story is over when the teacher cannot think of an appropriate answer to a particular question within the time-limit.

Variations: For an intermediate to advanced version of this improvisational activity, have various students be the story-tellers. The student who can tell the longest story wins.

Comment: This activity is wonderful for getting students to practice formulating questions in English. In its more advanced form, the activity also enhances a student's ability to listen and then quickly and appropriately respond to specific questions.

Name: Story-Telling
Level: Beginner to intermediate

Procedure: Have the class sit in a circle. You, or one of your students, should begin a story by saying one sentence (i.e. "Once upon a time there was a very lonely English student."). Then continue around the circle, having each student add one sentence to the story. The students should try to come up with their sentences as quickly as possible. To make the game more challenging give each student a time-limit on how long they have to think up their sentence.

Variations: (1) For an intermediate to advanced version of this activity, make up slips of paper with various words, phrases, or sentences on them before the story-telling begins. Hand out one slip of paper to each student. Have the students tell a story, circle-style, but this time with each student integrating the word, phrase, or sentence he or she received into the story. (2) In an advanced version of story-telling, two or three students are asked to create an endless stream of narration. The topic of the narrative is selected by the class. Two or three students are also chosen as a jury. The jury is provided with a stopwatch to measure the overall time of narration, as well as a yellow card and a red card. If the narrators fail to make grammatical sense, repeat an idea, hesitate, or leap unbelievably in the logic of the narrative, the jury is allowed to show them the yellow card (signaling an initial warning). The red card is shown for the second offense, and signals that the narration is over. The overall time of narration is written down and a new team of narrators takes the stage. The team that tells the longest story wins.

Comment: As in "There's Something in My Soup!", "Story-telling" gives students the chance to practice formulating sentences quickly in English. The intermediate version of "Story-telling" gives the teacher greater control over what the student must talk about, and thus allows him or her to introduce or practice vocabulary, specific grammatical constructions, and cultural information with his or her students. For instance, the words you pass out to your students might be words from a current vocabulary section in your textbook, or they might highlight certain cultural issues. The advanced version of "Story-telling" pushes students to begin thinking in English, as they have little time to translate out of their native language when constructing their story.

Name: Who am I?
Level: Intermediate

Procedure: Prepare a set of cards in advance by writing the name of a different famous person on each card (movie stars, musicians or composers, politicians, scientists, writers, cartoon figures, etc.). Prepare as many cards as you have students. In class, tape one card on each student's back, without letting the student see whose name is on the card. Each student must then figure out "their identity" by walking around and asking other students yes-or-no questions about the name attached to their back (i.e. "Am I still alive today?" "Am I a person?" "Am I female?" "Did I appear in movies?").

Variations: (1) The students are allowed to ask other questions beyond those requiring a yes-or-no response. The only question they are not allowed to ask is, "Who am I?" (or any version thereof). (2) A variation of "Who am I?" for intermediate to advanced students has one student throw a party for four "guests". The key here is that the student does not know who these guests are, and must try and guess their identities during the course of the party. To set up this activity, have one of your students briefly leave the room. This student will be the host of the party. While he or she is outside, choose four other students to be the four guests. Each guest must then be given a particular identity. Preferably, this identity should be based on the way in which the guest is related to the host (i.e. guest one is the host's seven-year-old brother, guest two is the host's plumber, guest three is the host's divorced wife and guest four is the host's former English instructor). The host is then invited back into the classroom and the party begins. The guests should arrive at about one-minute intervals and give verbal or non-verbal hints as to who they are, without giving away their identities. Once the host has guessed the identity of the four guests, the activity is over. (3) An advanced version of "Who am I?" begins again with one student briefly leaving the classroom. While this student is outside, the rest of the class comes up with a random noun and a verb (i.e. "microwave" and "singing"). Out of these two words the class establishes the subject or activity which the absent student is an expert in (in the above-mentioned case she may sing to microwaves, or teach microwaves how to sing). Then three students are chosen as a panel of interviewers. The expert is invited back into the classroom. The objective of the activity is to get the expert to guess what he or she is an expert in. The interviewers make this happen by giving clues to help the expert guess the words involved. The clues can use meanings, mime, gestures, or rhymes to hint at the chosen words, so long as the words themselves are not mentioned.

Comment: "Who am I?" is another scenario suited to test a student's ability to formulate questions in English. In its basic form, "Who am I?" can also be an excellent means of introducing students to various important people in English-speaking cultures. Ideally, you could even use "Who am I?" as part of a larger cultural presentation in your class. For instance, if you are currently talking about music in England, you might use "Who am I?" to acquaint students with various composers and musical artists from England. As an activity aiming at understanding literature, "Who am I?" can even be used in more advanced English classes. If you are reading a play by Shakespeare, you could use this scenario to enhance students' knowledge of the various characters in the play.

Name: Word Ball
Level: Intermediate

Procedure: Divide your class into groups. Have each group form a circle. One student begins by "tossing" a word to anyone else in the circle. The next student then "tosses" another freely associated word to someone else in the circle. This activity should be played at a moderate to fast pace, so that the students do not think ahead, but simply free associate on the word they have been tossed. To clarify who the word is being tossed to, have the students simultaneously throw a ball to one another.

Variations: An advanced version of this game has two pairs of students come to the front to the classroom. Each pair of students should lock arms. Then have the two pairs converse with one another, with the two students in each pair alternating words. A sample conversation between pair A (with person 1 and 2) and pair B (with person 3 and 4) might go like this:

Pair A:	Pair B:
Person 1: How	Person 3: I
Person 2: are	Person 4: am
Person 1: you	Person 3: fine
Person 2: doing?	Person 4: thanks

It should be as if there are only two people having a conversation, instead of four.

Comment: The basic version of "Word Ball" helps direct students away from establishing the meaning of an English word by simply translating it from his or her native language. Instead, "Word Ball" helps students to think of words that are linked by various concepts, and thus encourages them to think in the target language. The advanced variation of "Word Ball" is an excellent exercise for getting students to practice English grammar, particularly English sentence structure.

Name: In a ___, with a ___, while a ___
Level: Advanced

Procedure: In this activity, a group of students is selected to perform a scene defined by the class. The actors take the stage while the rest of the class fills in the sentence "In a __, with a__, while a__." (e.g. "In a bus, with a terrorist, while a woman is having a baby."). The actors must then act out this scene, after a brief period of preparation.

Variation: This activity can also be played as a competitive game. To do this, simply select two or more teams of actors. Each team must then act out the sentence that the audience comes up with. The audience (class) decides which group has most successfully performed the scene.

Comment: This scenario helps students not only to activate dormant language and communicate spontaneously, but also to practice compensatory strategies when confronted with situations where they cannot come up with the appropriate English word.

Name: Grab-bag
Level: Advanced

Procedure: Two or more competing teams of students (actors) are formed. The rest of the class (the audience) writes individual words, or short sentences on pieces of paper. The pieces of paper are then folded and scattered all over the classroom floor (the stage). The audience suggests a simple thematic backdrop for a scene (the first day on the job, getting ready for school, coming home past your curfew, etc.). One of the performers starts playing this scene, but after the third sentence or utterance they must take up one of the pieces of paper on the floor, unfold it, and read aloud what is written on it. A new team member must accept this new information and advance the scene further before picking up the next piece of paper. The team continues until all of the members have had an opportunity to act out part of the scene. Then it is the next team's turn. After all of the teams have completed their performances, the audience decides which group was most successful in integrating the various words into a coherent scene.

Comment: Since "Grab-bag" is very loosely structured, it resembles, in many ways, the open-endedness of a standard English conversation. Moreover, students are challenged to introduce new ideas into the conversation, including words and ideas that may not neatly fit into the current discussion. In this way, students must actively use their English language skills (by steering the conversation), instead of passively repeating words and phrases (as is the case in drill exercises and some simulations).

Name: Dubbing
Level: Advanced

Procedure: Here a short passage or scene is chosen from a novel, short-story, film, or drama, or it is created in class. One group of students, who are off-stage, reads the scene out loud for another group of students, who simultaneously act the scene out on-stage. The students who read the scene should not forget to read it expressively, and the class should include sound effects where appropriate. The actors should make sure to act out the emotions and attitudes suggested in the text.

Variations: (1) Have the students brainstorm various categories of film, literature and theater (e.g. Western, Sci-fi, Gangster, Kung-fu, Farce, Opera, Musical, Horror). Select a category and have a group of students act out the passage or scene appropriately. No matter how absurd the situation, the students should try to perform it as "realistically" as possible. (2) Follow the same procedure as in variation one, the only difference being that students should act out the scenes using different emotions (i.e. hatred, anger, jealousy, happiness, fear, revenge, love) instead of different artistic categories.

Comment: Students often do not know how to go about discussing a literary text, or are too afraid of saying something 'wrong' when attempting an interpretation. One way of getting past both of these barriers is to shift the interpretive act from speaking to acting. Both "Grab-bag" activities allow students to interpret a text by performing the text rather than discussing it. In the basic form of "Grab-bag", have the students act out part of the text and then ask them why they chose to read or perform certain sentences or scenes the way they did. This, of course, gets more interesting if you have multiple groups perform the same scene. In the second version of "Grab-bag" you could ask the students how their performances altered the scene. Changing the category or emotional focus of a scene allows students to recognize the various components and structures that make up a piece of literature, film, or drama. Performing a scene additionally encourages a student to think about various forces influencing a character's actions, as well as the larger intentions of the author.

In case you decide to make use of these activities, please do me the favour and record what your students say. If possible, send me a tape or a transcript, because I need more empirical data for my research project. If you need more information, please contact me again.

What's the Question?

Level: Any Level

Type of Activity: listening and speaking

Purpose: review question forms previously studied in class

Procedure:
Form two teams (three will work, but two seems to add just the right amount of competitive tension).

Explain the game, with a few examples of answers in search of questions. Ask, 'What's the question?', and get students to correctly say the corresponding questions for your answer.

Have two players--one from each team--come to the front. Style it like a game show if you like, with the students standing side-by-side. If you have access to bells or buzzers, it's even more fun.

Next, read an answer to a question and say, 'What's the question?' The fastest player to respond wins a point for her/his team. New contestants come to the front for a new round.

Rationale: This game forces the students to think backwards a little, so they must provide a grammatically perfect question. All too often, they are used to answering rather than asking questions, so this is challenging and useful as review.

Bad Fruit: A Shoppers' Nightmare

Level: Easy to Medium

This is an oral communication activity appropriate for EFL learners in elementary/primary school. (It's optimal for grades 3-6). This game is designed for practicing "shopping" dialogues and vocabulary.

Materials: "produce" and play money.

Object of Game: To accumulate as many products as possible.

Students are divided into clerks and shoppers.

The clerks set up "stands" to allow easy access for all shoppers (e.g. around the outsides of the room with their backs to the wall).
The shoppers are given a set amount of money* (e.g. dollars, euros, pounds, etc.) and begin at a stand where there is an open space.
Students shop, trying to accumulate as many items as possible (each item is 1 unit of currency).

Periodically, the instructor will say "stop" (a bell or other device may be needed to attract attention in some cultural and classroom contexts) and call out a name of one of the products. Students with that product must then put ALL their products in a basket at the front of the room. The remaining students continue shopping. Students who had to dump their products must begin again from scratch (with fewer units of currency).

The student with the most products at the end wins.

Students then switch roles.

*It is recommended giving students as much money as possible since students who run out can no longer participate.
Alternative play for more advanced students: Clerks set the price of items. Shoppers have the option of negotiating the price. There are two winners in this version: The shopper who accumulates the most products and the clerk who makes the most money.

Toilet Paper Icebreaker

Level: Any Level

This activity is used as a "getting to know you", icebreaker on the first day of class.

1. Teacher takes the toilet paper roll and takes several squares of toilet paper, then hands the roll of toilet paper to a student. The teacher tells the student to take some, more than three.
2. After everybody in the class has some paper, we count the squares we have, then we have to tell that many things about ourselves, in English.

This activity works well with substitute teachers also.

The toilet paper is such an attention getter.

Chain Spelling (Shiri-tori)

Level: Easy to Medium

The teacher gives a word and asks a student to spell it, and then a second student should say a word beginning with the last letter of the word given. The game continues until someone makes a mistake, that is, to pronounce the word incorrectly, misspell it or come up with a word that has been said already, then he/she is out. The last one remaining in the game is the winner.

This game can be made difficult by limiting the words to a certain category, e.g.. food, tools, or nouns, verbs, etc.

Bang Bang - A Vocabulary Game

Level: Easy

Divide the group into two teams. Explain that they are cowboys and they are involved in a duel. One student from each team comes to the front. Get them to pretend to draw their pistols. Say "how do you say..." and a word in their mother tongue. The first child to give the answer and then "bang bang", pretending to shoot his opponent is the winner. He remains standing and the other one sits down. I give 1 point for the right answer and 5 extra points if they manage to "kill" 4 opponents in a row.

Editor's Note: Instead of saying the word in the students' mother tongue, it would be possible to use a picture or to say a definition ("What do you call the large gray animal with a long nose?")

Battle Ships - A Vocabulary Game

Level: Easy to Medium

Preparation:
Divide the students in to groups of four or five. Then ask the student to make the name for their ships for example with the names of animals, cities, movie stars or let them find their own favourite names.

Ask them to choose the Captain and the Shooter. The captain's duty is to memorize his ship's name, so he can reply if somebody call his ship's name. The shooter's duty is to memorize the names of the ships of 'their enemies', so he can shoot them by calling their ship's name.

Activity:
Arrange all the captains in a circle, the ships' crews must line up behind their captains. The shooter is the last crew member in line.

The teacher must decide a lexical area of vocabulary, this vocabulary will be used to defend their ships from the attacks. Every students (except the shooters) must find their own words. The lexical area for example, "Four Legged Animals". Give the students 1-2 minutes to find as many possible words as they can and memorize them.

Start the game by calling a ship's name, for example the ship name is "THE CALIFORNIAN". The captain of THE CALIFORNIAN must reply with a word from the lexical area given, for example he says "TIGER" followed by his crews behind him one by one, "COW"; "SHEEP" until it  is the shooter turns and he calls out the name of another ship and the captain of the ship called must reply and his crews must do the same thing. No word can be repeated.

If the captain is late to reply (more than 2 seconds) or his crew can not say the words or a word repeated or the shooter shoots the wrong ship (his own ship or the ship that has already been sunk) the ship is sunk, and the crew members can join the crew of another ship.

The teacher can change the lexical area for the next round.

In the last round there will be two big groups battling to be the winner.

Describing Appearances & Characteristics of People

Level: Easy to Medium (Low to low intermediate)

Each student is then give one sheet of paper.  One student sits at the front of a room.  He/she describes a person and the rest of the class draws the person being described.

It is more interesting if the person being described is known by everyone. Once the student has finished describing that person then he/she reveals who it is and each student shows his/her drawing. The laughter from this is hilarious as the impressions tend to make the character in question look funny.

It is a good idea to encourage students to ask the interviewee student questions about who they are describing.

Sentence Race

Level: Any Level

A good game for large classes and for reviewing vocabulary lessons.

1. Prepare a list of review vocabulary words.
2. Write each word on two small pieces of paper. That means writing the word twice, once on each paper.
3. Organize the pieces like bundles, 2 bundles, 2 sets of identical words.
4. Divide the class into 2 teams. get them to make creative team names.
5. Distribute each list of words to both teams. every student on each team should have a paper.  Both teams have the same words.
6. When you call a word, 2 students should stand up, one from each team. The students must then run to the blackboard and race to write a sentence using their word.

The winner is the one with a correct and clearly written sentence.

This is always a hit with kids. For more advanced students, use tougher words

Paper Airplane Game

Level: Any Level

Draw a target (with points - like a dart board) on the white board or use a cardboard box in the middle of the room. Then, students make paper airplanes and launch them after they answer your question in the form of a sentence. I don't except my beginners/low intermediate students to form complete sentence so I help them to form correct sentences. To my surprise they will repeat the sentence several times (while I'm helping them) just so they can throw their airplane. For beginner and low intermediate classes, I recommend formulating questions that lead to 1 or 2 types of answers. This allows for better memorization. For example, use CAN/WILL questions and write the beginning part of the answer on the board "I can/will...".  I recommend giving a prize to make the target points mean something, thus peaking their interest.

Pictionary (Game 1) - revamp - Charades (Game 2)

Level: Any Level

Write out series of categories like professions (doctor, bus driver, etc.), animals, foods, actions (fishing, haircut, etc.) then divide the class into groups of 2. One student draws and the other guesses. Next turn, the guesser draws and drawer guesses. This game works best with the arbitrary stop watch (30 seconds). This is designed for one lesson.

Then for another day take the same categories (or create new ones) and play the same game except students, this time, act it out (no speaking or noises).

Spelling Contest

Level: Any Level

First, if you have a large class you have to divide it in 2 teams. then the teacher says a word or a sentence depending on the level for the students to spell.  Students should spell these correctly with not even one mistake. The team that has more points is the winner

What's the Meaning?

Level: Medium to Difficult

You, the teacher, may need a dictionary do this activity.

• Choose a word which is long, difficult, and unknown to the students, a good word to begin with is: warmonger.
• Without using a dictionary, your students write down a definition. (They can work out the definition in groups of three).  Allow them a few minutes to think and write.
• Collect the definitions and read them aloud.
• When you have finished reading, they will have to vote which of those is the correct one. (It doesn't matter if none of them is the correct one)
• After they have voted and none of the groups guessed the meaning you read the correct one aloud.

The idea of this game is to let students be creative and practice writing skills.

Then you can have the students to discuss their writings.