Beyond the Fun: TEFL Classroom Games That Solve Real Learning Problems

Teaching English abroad can be challenging! 

Walking into a classroom, with your best smile and your best efforts being met with blank stares, despondency, or half-opened eyes, can leave you feeling depleted and asking yourself,  “Am I really cut out for this?”

Instead of giving you the spiel on how things will get better and to hang in there, I think it’s only right to give you practical advice on how to get your students activated. 

That is, practical TEFL classroom games that address specific problems. 

Not a one-size-fits-all approach, but games that solve specific classroom issues – and are proven to work!

Let’s dive in!

TEFL classroom games to wake up a tired class

The quickest way to wake your class up, be it after a PE lesson or lunch, is to get them moving and thinking fast! Research backs this up: kinesthetic activities increase engagement, stimulate the brain, and increase focus in students.

Here are 2 energising, low-prep games that work every time:

1. Slap the Board

Perfect for: Vocabulary/Grammar warm-ups

How it works:

• Write vocabulary on the board.
• Two students stand ready, hands behind their backs.
• Call out a definition.
• The students race to slap the word first. 

Why it works:
The Slap Game is awesomely effective in waking up tired students. It gets students to be competitive, increasing their motivation, gets them moving fast, and gets them to focus intensely. Students get so excited that they ask to play again!

This game worked wonders in my Grades 3-6 classes in South Korea. Students immediately light up, and the class gets so involved as well. It’s like Squid Game, but for learning!

2. Stand Up If…

Perfect for: Mixed-age and mixed-level groups

How it works:
Call out statements and questions related to your lesson. If your lesson is on the weather, you could call out:

• Stand up if you think Winter is cold.
• Stand up if your favourite season is Summer. 
• Stand up if you can describe the weather today.
• Stand up if you can name the four seasons.

Why it works:

This game is great as it includes the entire class at the same time. It has a mix of statements and questions which allow for low-pressure participation and, for students who wish to speak up, a chance to do so. This game is movement-based as well, which gets the blood pumping!

This game came in handy at any part of the lesson, when I saw my students slowly fading away into la-la land. It’s quick, won’t take up much time, and resets students fast.

TEFL classroom games to calm down chaos and regain focus

1. Silent Ball

Perfect for: noisy classes, overstimulated students
Fixes: lack of focus, chaotic transitions

How it works:

• All students stand.
• Students quietly throw a soft ball around the room.
• If they break the silence by talking or dropping the ball, they are out and have to sit down.

Encourage students not to rush, and minimse  or cut out instructions and comments altogether to reinforce being quiet. This is where TPR will come in handy.

Why it works:
Slow, silent, structured games help regulate energy and restore focus because they give students a simple goal with immediate consequences. 

In my classrooms, this game has proven to create calmer behaviour and longer concentration.

2. The Mirror Game

Perfect for: overexcited classes, younger learners

How it works:

• The teacher performs slow, rhythmic gestures like: touching your head; drawing a circle in the air; knocking on your desk twice.
• Students copy you as you do the gestures.
• Slow your movements down even more as you progress and create a repetitive movement cycle (sway arms -> touch your nose -> tap the desk twice and repeat). 

Why it works:
Calming physical movement shifts students’ energy downward, just like tai-chi. Because learners must watch closely and wait for the next movement, it encourages full attention. 

3. Slow Draw

Perfect for: end-of-day tiredness or mid-lesson chaos

How it works:

• Ask for a volunteer to come up to the front.
• Students to take out a pen and paper.
• Give the student at the front words for them to draw slowly on the board.
• The class writes down guesses, holding up their answers. 

Why it works:
This game gets students to problem-solve and focus, both of which improve when learning feels playful, research tells us. The slow pace allows students to redirect their energy into a focus-based task. We want them to have energy, but directed in the right direction.

TEFL classroom games that build confidence in shy or quiet students

1. Whisper Chain (also known as Broken Telephone)

Perfect for: anxious speakers

How it works:

• Students whisper a sentence along a chain of students, each student passing on the message.
• The final student says it aloud.

Usually this causes great amusement as the final sentence bears little resemblance to the original.

For mixed-ability or large classes, you can divide the class into groups, depending on their levels, and give them sentences that closely match their language levels. 

Why it works:
Whisper Chain is a low-risk, student-centred game. Students get to play and practice speaking English without having all the attention on themselves, which reduces anxiety. 

2. Dialogue Dominoes

Perfect for: Mixed-level speaking practice

How it works:

• Create a dialogue that relates to your lesson.
• Put the class into pairs if it’s a small group, or into groups of four if it’s a larger class.
• Cut up the dialogue pieces.
• Students to arrange them in order.
• Students must practise reading and performing the dialogue with one another.

Use easier dialogue sets for Beginner learners and add some more challenging dialogue for stronger students.

Why it works:
Sequencing activates problem-solving, and working with peers helps students feel more secure before speaking. The tactile element of this game enhances student engagement too, allowing students to play with their hands and visualise outcomes. The most introverted students will enjoy this game!

3. Role-Play with Props

Perfect for: shy students

How it works:

• Choose a simple prop or character prompt. 
• If you have a small class, hand out small, low-prep prop items to each student. 
• If you have a big class, assign “mini roles” to groups (Group A are doctors, Group B are chefs).

Props and character prompt ideas:

• a hat
• a name badge (“Dr Kim,” “Teacher Bob” or “Chef Luca”)
• a character card with a role (teacher, tourist, doctor)
• a toy microphone for “TV presenter mode”

Give students a scenario linked to your target language:

• “You are a doctor giving advice.”
• “You are a chef explaining how to make your favourite meal.”
• “You are a TV presenter interviewing a celebrity.”

 

• Give students 2 minutes to prepare their dialogue.
• Students perform within their groups or pairs and not in front of the class.

Try and maintain that creativity is the aim and not accuracy.

Why it works:
When students speak as a character, rather than themselves, they become less self-conscious, as it creates emotional distance from themselves. They are not “Mary, the shy student”, but rather “Chef Ramsay”, and it feels safer to speak. This game is fun as shy students get to be silly, and their focus is on the character and not them.

TEFL classroom games that sneak in grammar and vocabulary practice

1. Grammar Relay

Perfect for: tenses, error correction

How it works:

• Before the lesson begins, write grammar tasks on the board for each team. 
• Divide the class into teams of two or four.
• Each team forms a line facing the board.

Grammar tasks on the board can include: 

• Change the verb to the future tense
• Correct the mistake
• Make a question
• Write the comparative form
• Fix the word order
• Turn the sentence into the negative
• Choose the correct preposition

 

• Give each team a whiteboard marker or piece of chalk.
• On your signal, the first students race to the board to complete one task. 
• After writing, they run back and pass the marker to the next student, who races up and completes the next task.
• Continue until all tasks are done. 
• The first team to finish and get all answers correct wins.

Teacher role:
Monitor accuracy and reject incorrect or incomplete answers. Ensure students fix answers before the next student comes up. Encourage teammates to help one another and not rush through the game.

Why it works:
This game gets students pumped. The pressure is on to compete and win. Having students in a relay game increases motivation to be accurate and stimulates students to recall past knowledge. This game is ideal for students in primary or elementary school, not so much with teens. 

2. Word Auction

Perfect for: vocabulary review
Fixes: spelling confusion, weak vocabulary confidence

How it works:

• Prepare a list of words that are both correctly and incorrectly spelt. 
• Write them on the board or project them, one at a time, onto a screen.
• Group the class into pairs for small classes, or groups for large classes. 
• Give each group an equal amount of “money”. This can be points, tokens, or paper money. 
• Students to bid on words they think are correct. 
• Groups decide how much to bid. 
• Students write their bid and hold it up.
• If the word is correct, the highest bidder wins the word, and all groups keep their points. If the word is incorrect, all bidders lose their points. 
• Continue until you’ve auctioned all the words.
• The group with the most points or correct words wins.

Why it works:
The word auction game is great as it gets students to be strategic with their decision-making. It gets students engaged with spelling and critical thinking in a sneaky way. 

TEFL classroom games for large classes and limited resources

1. Running Dictation

Perfect for: Large classes with enough space

How it works:

• Split the class into groups,
• Print or write a paragraph of text relating to your lesson onto separate pages.
• Allocate a paragraph per group (the same paragraph).
• Stick each page on a wall, far enough away from students to walk to.
• Tell each group what page is theirs to run to.
• In each group, students take turns being a scribe/writer and a runner. 
• The first runner runs to their page on the wall, memorises as much as they can from the paragraph, and relays the sentence or words they remember to the scribe, who then writes it down.
• As soon as the scribe has completed writing, the next runner runs.
• If, for instance, there is a group of 3, the scribe will then be the 3rd runner, and the first runner will become the scribe for that round. In the next round, the 2nd runner will be the scribe and so on.
• The group that finishes writing the entire paragraph must raise its hands for its work to be checked. 
• The teacher shouts “freeze”, where all students must stop what they are doing.
• The teacher checks to see if they have indeed correctly written the entire paragraph down.
• If it is correct, they win. If it’s not correct, the game resumes until a winner is decided.

Why it works:

Running Dictation is an all-rounder game for practising writing, speaking, reading, and listening. Using this game for big classes works as it gets all students deeply involved in every part of the game. Each student has a turn to write, listen, read, and speak. Nobody is left out!

Bear in mind that this game gets students riled up! Students will be running around the classroom, and noise levels will be high. If you need to manage the noise levels and energy, tell students off the bat that they have to whisper or they will be given a time penalty.

2. Guessing game

Perfect for: Small classroom spaces

How it works:

• The teacher writes a word or phrase on the board.  
• Students work in pairs. One student gets to see the word on the board, whilst the other student puts their heads down on the desk. 
• The student who saw the word has to describe the word or phrase to their partner, without saying the word, while the other has to guess.
• They switch roles for the next word.

Why this works:

This game is perfect if you are low on resources. Even if you don’t have a board to use, you can use a piece of paper and a pen. If your classroom is quite small, this game works well as students stay in their seats and play from their desks. 

Editor’s note: This game is also known as Back to the Board or Hot Seat. It is my go-to game for any and every class because it works with every kind of EFL student, from Beginners to Advanced and Young Learners to adults. It can be played in groups of any size. All you have to do is change up the language accordingly.

How to choose the right ESL game for your class

Choosing the wrong game for your ESL class can have negative consequences, or no effect at all. Games are not add-ons at all, but are part of the lesson. They are extremely useful tools in stimulating critical thinking, problem solving, memorisation, and overall knowledge and language acquisition. 

Being mindful of the following criteria when choosing a game will help your lesson go a long way:

• Identify the classroom dynamic. Are they quiet, shy, noisy, or unmotivated?
• Establish your lesson’s topic and aim, and find a game where the objectives match. Grammar -> Grammar Relay, speaking -> Go Fish, vocabulary -> Word Auction etc.
• Take age, class size, language level, and classroom space into consideration. Young Learners need more space and simple rules, teens like to compete, and group games work well in big classes.  
• If you’ve never played the game before, trial run the game with your colleagues. It will help you iron out any issues before you step into the classroom.
• Be well prepared! Being disorganised or ill-prepared confuse your students and your game will fall flat.
• Have fun!

Playing games in an EFL classroom is such an integral part of learning. Students may see it as a “free lesson”, but little do they know it’s work they are doing! 

Games are intentionally used as a teaching method, which has been backed up by research, to improve learning outcomes and manage classrooms when students are lethargic, disinterested, or just plain ol’ tired. 

The best thing about games is that they make learning fun. Some games may not vibe with your class, sure, but others are known to work every time. As TEFL teachers, we are advocates for sharing and caring when it comes to what games work well and which don’t.

So we we recommend you try some of these games, adapt them to your students, try out some new ideas of your own, and let us know what works!