Discovering Sentences

ESL/EFL Game Profile
Name of Game:
Dicovering Sentences
Target Students:
Middle School
Target Students:
High School
Target Students:
University
Target Students:
Adults
Duration:
15-30 minutes
Number of Students:
Groups of 2
English Skills:
Grammar
English Skills:
Spelling
English Skills:
Writing
Objective:
Use word lists to create sentences
Instructions
  1. Give each student a photocopy of a list of 150-300 mixed words
  2. Have students make sentences with the words
Variations
  • Who can make the shortest sentence?
  • Who can make the longest sentence?
  • Who can make the most sentences?
Notes

This is a great time to emphasize capitalization and punctuation, and teach sentence types and give examples such as:

  • Imperative: Do it!
  • Interrogative: Do What?
  • Declarative: Do this.
  • Exclamatory: Help me!
  • etc.

Textbooks are allowed, as are superlatives, past tenses, plurals and other suffixes, etc. that can be devised from the basic words on the list:

  • SAY: said, saying, says, etc.
  • BAD: badder, baddest, badly, badness, etc.

Some possible sources for your word list:

  • The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language
  • The 100 Most Commonly Used Verbs in the English Language

A big thanks to bill for this EFL/ESL game!