Each student, or pair, or small group of students gets one card. They then have a few minutes to prepare a short speech (one minute or longer, as you prefer). For additional speaking practice, other students should be encouraged to come up with questions to ask after the speech.
Depending on the number of students in your class, each student (or a pair or small group) gets between three and six cards (more cards might be too much for students who are not that familiar with English idioms).
Students should think of a situation related to an idiom. Individual students should tell their partner about the situation culminating in the idiom, or in the case of a pair or small group, tell the class.
Example: “It rained so much last Saturday that our trip to the zoo got cancelled. I was very disappointed. But then I had more time to study for my test on Monday, so I thought it was really a blessing in disguise that the trip got cancelled.”
Students may be allowed to write out their stories, but should be encouraged to look up and speak – not-read – what they have written.
Option 1: Students make individual sentences with each word on the card.
Option 2: Students have a few minutes to make up a brief story where they use all the words. With this option students may write out their sentences, but should be encouraged to look up and speak – not-read – their sentences. Students could also work in pairs or small groups, working with one card at a time.
Option 3: Use these cards in combination with grammar review.
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With some words, the student is reminded that the meaning intended is a noun, or a verb, or an adjective, if the particular word has meanings in more than one word type. Please note that not all such cases have been marked – only the more common ones.
It is often the case that a word could have more than one meaning, even more than one meaning as a noun or a verb. In these cases, students should be encouraged to make sentences with as many meanings as they can think of.
A note on the randomness of the collections of words on the cards: Sometimes it may seem that the person who created the cards had reason to compile a certain set of words on one card. Rest assured that I worked off a list compiled by the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and with the exceptions of one or two words, simply added the words as they appeared according to their usage rank.
85 game cards on the Canada, Mexico and United States of America lessons in the “Countries of the World” series, with a sentence structure sheet to practice grammar in a fun way.
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This product contains the following files:
85 playing card-size printable cards with names of countries, cities and other places (8.5 pages, 10 cards per page)
Printable list of all the places with phonetic pronunciation
Sheet with question-and-answer sentence structures for the 12 tenses, with more advanced example sentences plus a list of almost 150 travel/places-related verbs
“Who went to Cancun last year?” “I went to Cancun last year.”
“Who was watching a program about Banff National Park until midnight?” “I was watching a program about Banff National Park until midnight.”
“Who had already been to Times Square when they went there with their friends?” “I had already been to Times Square when I went there with my friends.”
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The grammar sentence structures in this sheet can be used with most sets of cards published by Essential Language Resources.
STEP 1: Choose what tenses and/or sentence structures you want to review with your students. (See OPTIONS in the “Countries of the World – Grammar Practice” PDF.)
STEP 2: Write the sentence structure(s) on the board for reference and a quick review, or print copies of the page in the PDF entitled, “12 Tenses: Simple Sentence Structures” to hand to students.
STEP 3: Shuffle the cards.
STEP 4: Keep one card (or if a student shuffled the cards, he/she should hand one card to the teacher without looking at it).
STEP 5: Distribute the cards among the students, with each student (hopefully) getting a handful of cards. The cards can be placed face-up on the desk, or the students can hold the cards in their hands.
STEP 6: Start the game by asking a question about the country, city or place at the bottom of the card you held back. IMPORTANT: Ignore the name at the top of the card.
STEP 7: Students listen carefully to hear if they have the card with the place asked about. If they have, they answer the question with the grammatically appropriate statement. They then ask a question about the place at the bottom half of the same card.
STEP 8: Once a student has answered and asked questions using both names on a card, they can turn the card over.
The game continues until all place names have been called. The first student to turn over all their cards, wins the game.
If necessary, the teacher can correct pronunciation of place names.
Please note that the statement at the top of the card with which the game begins is the answer to the FINAL question that would be asked. Since that would be the final question, the student with that particular card will be the last to turn over their final card. It is therefore important not to let anyone know what the final question would be until the end.
Also included in the PDF is a list of travel-related verbs. For more advanced students, of for a more challenging review, choose a number of verbs and specific sentence structures for a round with the Countries of the World cards
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List of places on the cards
Alaska Alberta Arizona Banff National Park Boston British Columbia Calgary California Canada Cancun Central Park Chiapas Chicago Chihuahua Ciudad Juarez Colorado Dallas Disneyland (the) District of Columbia Durango Edmonton (the) Empire State Building Florida (the) Golden Gate Bridge (the) Grand Canyon Grand Central Terminal Guadalajara City Guanajuato Halifax Houston Illinois Jalisco (the) Las Vegas Strip León Lincoln Park Los Angeles Manitoba Mexico Mexico City Miami Michigan Michoacán Montana Monterrey Montreal Nevada New Brunswick New Jersey New Mexico New York City Newfoundland (the) Niagara Falls (the) North Pole Nova Scotia Oaxaca Ontario Ottawa Pennsylvania Philadelphia Phoenix Puebla City Quebec Quebec City Regina San Antonio San Diego San Francisco San Jose Saskatchewan Sonora Sumidero Canyon National Park Texas (the) White House Tijuana Times Square Toronto (the) United States of America/ (the) USA Vancouver Veracruz Victoria Washington, D.C. Winnipeg Yellowstone National Park Yosemite National Park Yucatán
89 game cards on 10 lessons in the “Countries of the World” series, with a sentence structure sheet to practice grammar in a fun way.
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This product contains the following files:
89 playing card-size printable cards with names of countries, cities and other places (9 pages, 10 cards per page)
Printable list of all the places, with phonetic pronunciation
Sheet with question-and-answer sentence structures for the 12 tenses, with more advanced example sentences plus a list of almost 150 travel/places-related verbs
The grammar sentence structures in this sheet can be used with most sets of cards published by Essential Language Resources.
STEP 1: Choose what tenses and/or sentence structures you want to review with your students. (See OPTIONS in the “Countries of the World – Grammar Practice” PDF.)
STEP 2: Write the sentence structure(s) on the board for reference and a quick review, or print copies of the page in the PDF entitled, “12 Tenses: Simple Sentence Structures” to hand to students.
STEP 3: Shuffle the cards.
STEP 4: Keep one card (or if a student shuffled the cards, he/she should hand one card to the teacher without looking at it).
STEP 5: Distribute the cards among the students, with each student (hopefully) getting a handful of cards. The cards can be placed face-up on the desk, or the students can hold the cards in their hands.
STEP 6: Start the game by asking a question about the country, city or place at the bottom of the card you held back. IMPORTANT: Ignore the name at the top of the card.
STEP 7: Students listen carefully to hear if they have the card with the place asked about. If they have, they answer the question with the grammatically appropriate statement. They then ask a question about the place at the bottom half of the same card.
STEP 8: Once a student has answered and asked questions using both names on a card, they can turn the card over.
The game continues until all place names have been called. The first student to turn over all their cards, wins the game.
If necessary, the teacher can correct pronunciation of place names.
Please note that the statement at the top of the card with which the game begins is the answer to the FINAL question that would be asked. Since that would be the final question, the student with that particular card will be the last to turn over their final card. It is therefore important not to let anyone know what the final question would be until the end.
Also included in the PDF is a list of travel-related verbs. For more advanced students, of for a more challenging review, choose a number of verbs and specific sentence structures for a round with the Countries of the World cards.
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List of places on the cards
Auckland Beijing California Canada Cape Town Cardiff Chicago China Christchurch (the) Colosseum Disneyland (the) District of Columbia East Asia Edinburgh (the) Eiffel Tower England Florida (the) Forbidden City France (the) Ganges River (the) Grand Canyon Great Britain (the) Great Wall of China Guangzhou Hong Kong India Italy Japan Johannesburg Kolkata (the) Kruger National Park Kyoto (the) Leaning Tower of Pisa Liverpool London Los Angeles (the) Louvre Art Museum Macao Manchester Marseilles Mexico Miami Milan Montreal Mount Fuji Mumbai Nagoya Naples New Delhi New York New Zealand (the) Niagara Falls Nice (the) North Pole Northern Ireland (the) Notre Dame Cathedral Osaka Ottawa (the) Palace at Versailles Paris Portugal Rome San Francisco Scotland Shanghai South Africa South East Asia (the) South Pole Southern Europe Spain St. Peter’s Basilica (the) Summer Palace in Beijing Switzerland (the) Taj Mahal Tokyo Toronto Tower Bridge (the) Tower of London (the) United Kingdom (the) United States of America Vancouver (the) Vatican City Venice Wales Washington, D.C. Wellington (the) Western Cape Western Europe Yokohama
