101 EFL Activities for Teaching University Students

By Hall Houston

101 EFL Activities for Teaching University Students is filled with a variety of language learning activities that can be used throughout the semester. While designed with university teachers in mind, teachers of other subjects (and levels) will also find these activities useful in their classrooms.

The activities in this book relate to three major themes: the context of the university environment (students learn by talking about their lives as university students), group dynamics – the stages of a group (the stages all students go through during a semester), and active learning (learning through actively using the course material, instead of listening to a professor deliver a lecture).

The book is structured around the three main time periods of the semester: the beginning, the mid-period and the end. Activities in the first chapter are ideal for the first few weeks of class. The aims of these activities include learning names, learning about the teacher, learning about other students, and understanding the syllabus. Activities in the second chapter are suitable for the middle of the semester. The aims in this chapter include adding variety to lessons, reviewing material from previous weeks, talking about university life and giving feedback to the teacher. Activities in the third chapter are for the last week of the semester. Aims here include reviewing the entire course, talking about future plans, and ending the semester with a positive feeling.

This book also contains teacher development tips, short exercises designed to help teachers reflect on their own teaching and professional development in a university setting. In addition, the book has a list of recommended readings and web resources for university teachers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iTDi TESOL Online
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781393741633

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Near the end of the 20 th century, I had my first experience teaching college students. It was at a junior college, up in the hills of Chishan, a small town in southern Taiwan. Although I had a master’s degree in education and several years’ experience teaching EFL in language schools, I was new to teaching semester-long courses with over 40 students in each class, as well as planning out assignments, midterms and final exams. I was at times overwhelmed by the new situation, and often wished I had a resource that could assist me throughout the semester. In the years that passed, I taught at various universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, gradually increasing my skills in teaching university students. With this book, I’m hoping to pass along some of the best ideas and activities that have helped me.

This book is a resource for teachers of EFL at universities, based on my many years of experience teaching university classes. It provides numerous tips and activities for the beginning, middle and end of the semester. I also share other book titles and the names of the authors who I’ve learned from over the years. Whether you are new to teaching university students, or have been teaching for a while, you will find many useful ideas in the pages of this book.

Note: although this book is written for university teachers of EFL, the vast majority of activities would also be suitable for teachers of other subjects, or teachers in other types of schools, such as high schools and language schools.

The three themes of this book

You will find three main themes that underpin many activities in this book.

1) The context of the university environment

Many activities directly address the setting of a university campus. You can use this book to help students chat about their everyday lives as university students while they practice their English. For example, in Activity 51, ‘Video rant’, students have an opportunity to vent their frustrations about being a university student. Also, in Activity 59, ‘Role plays around the campus’, students will perform a role play of a situation that might occur somewhere on their own campus.

2) Group dynamics – the stages of a group

Group dynamics is a subfield of the social sciences focusing on the nature of groups: how they form, the qualities of a good group, and the stages that most groups pass through. Two ELT books covered these concepts and applied them to language teaching: Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom (2003) by Zoltán Dörnyei and Tim Murphey (Cambridge University Press), as well as Classroom Dynamics (1992) by Jill Hadfield (Oxford University Press). These two titles contain a wealth of information about how to successfully guide a class from the first week to the end of the course.

A common topic in group dynamics is the stages of group development. In their book Interpersonal Dynamics in Second Language Education, Madeline Ehrman and Zoltán Dörnyei identified four developmental stages of a class. These are: 1) group formation (at the beginning of the course), 2) transition (as students begin to know each other and establish roles), 3) performing (as students work together successfully and become productive), and 4) dissolution (at the end of the course).

Similarly, the authors of the book Teaching Within the Rhythms of the Semester, Donna Killian Duffy and Janet Wright Jones, divide a semester up into three stages: 1) Opening Weeks, 2) The Interim Weeks and 3) Achieving Closure.

Chapters 1 - 3 of my book cover these three stages, applied to an EFL course at a university. For example, Activity 2, ‘Saying names in a circle’, helps students to learn each other’s names in a playful way. Activity 68, ‘Personalized review sentences’, gives students an opportunity to use vocabulary from the course to talk about themselves. Activity 90, ‘Messages on the last day of class’, provides closure for the class during the last week.

3) Active learning

Another major influence on this book is active learning. Active learning is a movement in the universities to get students more engaged during university classes. In an article titled Active Learning: An Introduction, featured in ASQ Higher Education Brief, Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent provide this definition: Active learning consists of short course-related individual or small-group activities that all students in a class are called upon to do, alternating with instructor-led intervals in which student responses are processed and new information is presented.

Many ESL/EFL teachers might read this and think That’s how I teach now – with pair work and group work! However, in many countries, university courses (even English courses) are still taught through lectures, where students listen passively to their professors for the entire lesson.

If you currently teach a subject (such as linguistics, literature, or philosophy) at your university, you might benefit from learning more about active learning techniques, such as think-pair-share and the minute paper. Think-pair-share is a well-known active learning technique, where students reflect on a question related to course material, form a pair with a classmate, and share their answers in a brief discussion. The minute paper is an activity where students have one minute to write down everything they remember from the day’s lesson. (For more active learning exercises, I refer you to two recent books, Small Teaching by James Lang, and Hitting Pause by Gail Taylor Rice.)

Regardless of what subjects you teach, your lessons can always benefit from elements of active learning. Chapters 2 and 3 suggest a number of activities where students actively practice and review language covered in previous lessons. For example, Activity 70, ‘Quizzing each other’, calls on students to write review questions and test their classmates. Also, Activity 78, ‘Creating a mini-book’, taps into students’ artistic side as they create and illustrate a small book that features key words and phrases from the entire course.

What is unique about university students?

If you are teaching university students for the first time, you may wish to consider how they differ from other types of learners, such as young learners or teenagers. While it’s unfair to generalize about all university students, I would like to emphasize a few points that apply to most, if not all, university students.

They are in the process of developing into adults. Many have left home for the first time and are dealing with a number of new issues. Without their parents’ guidance, they must learn to take care of their own needs.

They are starting to transition into the world of work. They might be working part-time on or off campus and considering what type of job they want when they graduate.

They must grapple with more challenging coursework. In many universities, new students have to deal with more sophisticated course material than they encountered in high school. In addition, they need to familiarize themselves with the academic world of theories, facts and research.

Overview of the book

The following chapters cover the three main stages of a semester: the first week or two, the subsequent weeks, and the end of the semester.

Chapter 1, ‘Getting off to a good start’ contains a collection of activities all aimed at helping your new class go smoothly, including activities for learning names, learning about classmates, learning about the teacher, understanding more about the course, and becoming more familiar with the university campus.

Chapter 2, ‘Maintaining motivation and interest in the interim weeks’ offers an assortment of activities designed to keep the course fresh and enjoyable. These include listening, reading, video and music activities, as well as activities where students chat about university life and review language that came up earlier in the course. This chapter also has some activities that contain an element of surprise, and others that allow students to offer feedback on how the course is going.

Chapter 3, ‘Ending the semester gracefully’ is intended for the last few weeks of the semester, featuring review activities, activities for reflecting on the entire course, and activities for talking about the future.

A special feature of each chapter is titled Teacher Development Tips. These tips are short exercises designed to help teachers of university students reflect on their own development. They are intended to provide insight on how one can improve one’s teaching skills.

1

GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START

Introduction

This first chapter helps teachers with situations that come up at the beginning of a course. In their book, Teaching Within the Rhythms of the Semester, Duffy and Jones (1995) refer to this stage as the opening weeks. They describe it as the honeymoon period when energies are high and students are open to new approaches and the period when classroom community must be built.

At the start of the first semester, students are encountering each other for the very first time. Therefore, it’s vital that you begin with abundant opportunities for them to get acquainted. Activities for students to learn and remember names can help create a community in the classroom.

Also, teachers need to know their students’ names, as most students react more favorably to a teacher calling them by their name (instead of Hey, you!). It can be a major challenge to learn every student’s name, but repeated practice and review can make it easier to absorb the names into long-term memory.

Use icebreakers and getting to know you activities to let students learn about everybody else in the class. Devote lots of class time to pair work and group work activities where students learn about each other and gradually make friends in the classroom. In addition, you can provide a few activities where students can learn about you.

Finally, students need to know what to expect from your course. Guide them to explore your syllabus and to form a clear picture of class rules, class activities, homework and assessment.

Section A – Learning Names

1. Interlocking names on the board

Although it may not seem as essential as developing communicative skills, learning names is very important during the first few weeks of class to help students make friends. This activity helps students to learn each other’s names during the first week of classes.

Time: 5–15 minutes

Skills: Writing, speaking, pronunciation

Preparation: None

Procedure: