Recycling TL

When we cover a list of new words, or new grammar, or functional language, we normally conduct a series of activities that will help our students to memorise and use the new knowledge in real life interactions. We all know that language needs practice and if we want to check how much of the presented material our learners have assimilated, conducting recycling sessions is a must. We also want to highlight the small difference between recycling and revising. When we revise, we go through the previously introduced material as it was. When we recycle, we filter the information we want our students to remember and make part of their active vocabulary.

Below are several activities I have been using in my classes to recycle vocabulary, grammar and skills covered during the classes.

Recycling Vocabulary

Personally, I do this every week or every other week depending on the number of words/phrases that were newly introduced. My personal favourites are the ones below:

• Making sentences

No matter how many times we revise the words/phrases, translate them and make sure the students know the meaning, they will never become part of their long-term memory if we don’t put them into context. I like asking the students to do this once in 3 weeks time by choosing the words they have difficulty with memorizing or applying in the context. You can either set this task as homework or conduct a 10 minutes quick session in class. You can make it general by asking the students to choose the words they have difficulty with on their own, or take an educated guess and make it more personalized by choosing the words yourself for every individual student. The challenge for the learners here is to use as many words in one sentence as possible (you sure need to emphasize the point to make meaningful sentences). The student with the most words in one sentence wins. You can award them with anything the course budget can allow.

• Writing questions with the target words

This one is quite the same in structure with the activity described above, however, it has a more communicative aspect. This task can be set as homework or done in class as well, depending on the time you want to spend on preparation and practice. I personally like to set this as homework as students have more time to think and come up with better questions.

So, the activity is the following. Like with the previous one, you can ask the students to choose 7-10 words and make questions using the target word. For instance, if one of the target words is “run into problems” a question can be something like this; “What’s your strategy when running into problems?” When the questions are ready, I normally have a quick look at them to make sure they are linguistically OK. Next, you can ask the students to form groups/pairs and interview each other with the questions. In the meantime, it’s a good idea to monitor and take some notes for a delayed error correction slot later on. Read more on error correction here.

• Talk for 2 minutes using the target words

Another fun activity I like pulling out is dividing the students into 2 groups (A and B) and asking them to write down several topic names depending on the number of the students I have in each group. The topics should be numerised. E.g. if the groups have 5 students each, then each group should come up with 5-8 topic names at least . Topics can be something like “sport, globalization, tourism, etc.” When the topics are ready, I ask one person from group A to choose a topic number number from group B. When the topic is chosen, group A has 1 minute to help the one who chose the topic prepare for a speech by selecting words/phrases from the course vocabulary to use when talking. When the time is up, the student from group A gives the speech using as many words from the target vocabulary as possible. Group B counts the words. The game finishes when every student has had a chance to talk at least once. The group with the most used words/phrases wins.

This is quite a time-consuming activity but is a great way of recycling the vocabulary by putting them into impromptu speech. With 10+ groups, this can be done by 4 split groups with the teacher monitoring and taking some notes.

Recycling grammar

As grammar is considered to be one of the boring aspects of language learning by the majority of the students, recycling it is viewed as equally boring 🙂 So, if we want to sustain exposure to learning and recycling grammar, it’s better to come up with activities and tasks that are less traditional like pop quizzes and are more communicative. By the end of the day, we need the grammar to be communicatively more cohesive and accurate, not just to know a set of rules out of a context.

Here are the ones I use most of the time.

• Finding the mistakes

Distribute a text that has the target grammar structure. Let’s say, you have covered the topic of present perfect vs. past simple. Any textbook we use, normally has a text rich in the target structure to teach inductively. If not, you can use NEF editions, Speakout editions, etc. Retype the text by changing some of the original tenses with wrong ones. Set the students in pairs and have them find and correct the mistakes. Once the students are done, ask them to compare in pairs to see if everyone is on the same page. Finally, distribute the original text for the students to check. Make sure to come back to any misunderstanding the students might have by conducting a Q&A session.

• Interviewing

Let’s say you’ve covered the past simple tense. Ask students to work individually and write down questions they would want to ask a famous person if they ever met one. The person can be dead or alive. Next, deliver some famous people’s names to every student and ask them to pretend to be that person. Then, sit the students in two rows A and B. Row A are the interviewers, row B are the famous people. The interviewers should ask the questions they had initially prepared and try to get as much information as they can. The famous people should try to act accordingly. Once the interview is done, the students will need to swap their roles.

This activity can be moderated based on the target audience. You can ask the students to write job interview questions or any other sphere you want to focus on.

• Story writing

This activity is great not only for recycling grammar, but can be a nice revision of story structure as well as any target vocabulary you want to be included. Ask the students to tell you any word/phrase they remember from the previous sessions. Board whatever the students say if appropriate. Elicit some linking phrases (so, that’s why, moreover, etc.) and names (John, Jane, etc.) Next, set the students in pairs and ask them to come up with a title the story can have based on the language/prompts they see on the board. When the titles are ready, ask the students to start writing a story (read more about story writing here) using the target grammar tenses (past simple, past continuous, past perfect).

Recycling Functional Language

As we all know, functional language is one of the most difficult and challenging things to master in learning a foreign language. The better we use it, the more it speaks about our communicative competence. Hence, providing the students with a chance to have enough exposure to it every now and then is a good way to ensure they assimilate it and start to use it naturally. Functional language includes not only certain phrases to use in different situations (language for restaurants, for negotiating, etc.) but also the intonation, sentence stress, etc.

So, below are the types of activities I like using to spice up the classes.

• Debating

This is a nice way to recycle the for and against language, phrases to express opinion, expressions used to interrupt each other, etc. Choose a topic that you want the students to debate about, e.g. “School Children should be forced to wear a uniform”. Set the students into 2 teams; Team A — agreeing with the statement, Team B — disagreeing. Time the teams for 3 minutes to come up with the arguments for and against the topic. When the time is up, ask the groups to choose one speaker from each team. The speakers will have 1,5 minutes to introduce their arguments using the target language (You can have the language available in an overhead projector or as handouts). Then, the second speaker will need to present their arguments. When everyone is done, the rest of the students can have ping-pong comments using the target phrases for up to 3 minutes. When all is said, you can pass to the next topic.

This is a type of activity that students mostly enjoy as it gives them a chance to talk about real life issues and express their opinion about them.

• Role playing

Well, role-playing is an old favourite. Let’s say, you’ve covered the functional language of “Restaurants, ordering food, complaining about the service, etc.” Brainstorm some language that can be used in those situations and board them for the students to refer to it later on. Alternatively, you can have the language you want them to use ready before the class and just present them with it. Set the students in pairs and ask them to act out a role play using the target phrases. When the students are done, invite a couple of pairs to act it out open class for the rest of the group to follow the intonation patterns , sentence stress, etc.

• Improving the text

This activity has been my personal favourite for a long time. I use this one a lot when recycling “Telephone language” (read more about teaching telephone language here). Distribute an impolite telephone conversation to the students, without any pleases, thank yous and other phrases that make communication friendly. A lot of talks like this are available on the internet. This one can be adapted nicely for instance. Ask 2 students to read it as it is and check whether they liked it. The answer is usually NO. Then, set the students in pairs and ask them to try and improve the conversation by adding some phrases that will make the conversation more friendly. Once the students are done, ask them to act it out using appropriate intonation. This is really fun and gets the students very excited.

So, here was a list of things you can use to make your recycling sessions more interesting and interactive. How would you contribute to the list?