These games are good to get new learners of English to start to speak the English language in some fabric. One game is find a person. Give each student a simple English instruction, such as, "find a person who likes basketball" or "find a person who likes hip-hop music." Use pictures on the instructions as well as showing them an example of how to do it beforehand. When they find that particular student, have them introduce themselves in English and ask basic questions, like age and interests. Teach the students beforehand the meaning of these sentences: "how old are you?" and "what do you like to do?" Another icebreaker game for new learners is a game called "what is in the bag." Teach students the words for the things that are in the bag, as well as how to form sentences, For example, if you pull out a watch, teach the students to say this: "A watch is in the bag." This is a good way to teach prepositions such as "on," "in," "under" as well as how to form basic sentences. It also gets students loosened for a more formal lesson.
Young kids will inevitably need entertainment while learning English. If your students are six or younger, doing a physical exercise game to help them learn English action verbs is a good idea. For example, tell them to stand up. Then, literally, teach them the words for "walk," "run," "jump," "turn," "crawl" and so on. If possible, you can even make up a little rhyme for them; other words you can teach physically are "sit down," "smile," "sleep," "stretch" and so on. Be sure to be animated, as this will keep the kids entertained and learning naturally. Other games you can play with young learners are ABC-based songs. For example, when teaching the letters "D," "E" and "F," you can either find a song in an English teaching book or make one up yourself. You can make a rhyme such as this: "D, D is for dog, dog dog run run run; E, E is for elephant, elephant elephant eat eat eat; F, F is for frog, frog frog jump jump jump." This game will add animal vocabulary as well as put action verbs into context. Have one or two students be a letter and animal and have the rest of the class sing. The kids acting should wait for their part and act accordingly.
One good speaking game for intermediate learners is tops and tails. Have a student start with a sentence, such as "Jack goes to the mall"; the next student should then say a sentence starting with a word that begins with the letter "L." For example, if the next student says, "Lazy people are not successful in life," the next student has to begin his sentence with the letter "E." This forces students to think creatively, enhances sentence formation skills as well as challenging one's vocabulary skills. Another game to play is the guess who game. Ask each student to write a paragraph-long English introduction about themselves in a third-person format. Have them hand in their personal riddle introductions and have each student get a chance to read out loud the a classmate's description. For example, a description can be: "He is 15 years old and wants to go to Hong Kong for college. He likes swimming in the ocean, hiking, playing soccer and traveling across Southeast Asia. His father is a banker and his mother is a nurse. In the future, he hopes to start his own importing company." At the end of the description, the student should say out loud, "Guess who?" Whoever knows should raise their hand, except the person who wrote that description. This is also a good way for the class to get to know each other better. Encourage the use of difficult sentence structures and vocab. Correct grammar mistakes in the writing as well.
For older learners of English and more advanced learners of English, you will have to prepare tougher games and games that are more analytically focused than play-focused. One game to play is an English riddle game. Divide the class into several teams and ask them English riddles. Give them a few minutes to discuss the riddle amongst each other and solve it. Here are a few examples of good riddle questions: "What did the ghost mail home while away on vacation?"; "What is the same size as a horse but does not weigh anything?"; and "What begins and ends with the letter 'T' and has 'T' in it?" The answers to these, in order, are "ghostcards," "the horse's shadow" and "a teapot." These questions will challenge the student's English analytical skills and enhance fluency in the language. Encourage questions to be asked. Another game to play is "What's the meaning?" Choose difficult yet useful vocabulary; the idea is to connect students to learn how to infer the meaning of an English word by looking at its parts. Divide the class into groups of three or four and give a few minutes to write or tell you an English definition of the word. For example, a good word to start could be "warhawk"; the next word you could give them could be "peacenik." Advanced learners, even though they never may have heard these words, should be able to infer the meaning.