Games that require teamwork, such as a treasure hunt or a murder mystery activity, encourage English students to interact. Giving students a common problem to work on also helps prompt more English speaking than passively sitting at a desk and answering questions. As well as improving spoken English, games help students to get to know each other. As a teacher, it is an opportunity for you to watch which students have leadership skills.
Games such as "hangman," "charades" or "20 questions" promote student talking. When playing these games, have the students take turns being the moderator. Encourage students to brainstorm their ideas. The more excited students get about playing the game, the more animated they become and their inhibitions about speaking English break down.
The teacher assigns a topic -- a childhood experience, favorite food, best sport -- and the students have a few minutes to prepare a two-minute speech on the topic to deliver to the class. A variation on this game is to write the topic on cards and have the students pick one from the deck. If the student picks a topic she has already spoken about, have her pick another card. Once every topic have been covered by each students -- allowing students to listen to each other talk about the same subject -- prepare a new batch of topic cards.
Games such as "How many adjectives can you think of to describe this car?" or thesaurus quizzes like "How many verbs can you think of that mean almost the same things as "run"? can expand students' vocabularies. With young children you may want to award paste-on stars for the winners of each round of the game. With adults, write their responses on the whiteboard and have them add their answers to their vocabulary books.
An adventure game is an interactive computer game where a main character, such as a detective, uses dialogue to tell you what is going on and what she sees. Based on the information, the student then moves the mouse and the character responds with new information. Adventure games, such as "Secret of Monkey Island" or "Sam & Max," are better than movies because the spoken English is slower and clearer than that heard in films.