Words into stories

Looking for a way to review vocabulary? Here's another activity using the Word Builder page of the magazine. It gets students using the target language creatively, which makes it more likely that they will remember it. 

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Vocabulary revision

What you need:
The two Word Builder pages, copied, with the first page cut up into the strips of separate words, and the second page cut up into its different parts.

What you do:
This is a revision activity, and as such presupposes that your students have already met the words and used them in another activity (for example the one in the Word building post from June 21st).

Divide your class into pairs or small groups, unless you would prefer your students to work individually.

Hand out four or five of the word strips to each group. You can do this so that each group has a completely different set from the others, or allow some overlap so that some words occur in more than one set. Make sure that each group has at least one word from each section (nouns, verbs, etc.).

Tell the students to look at the words and to remind themselves of their meaning, pronunciation, and so on. Then ask them to fold the strips so that they can only see the word itself. This is so that they don't get distracted or "led" by the example sentence.

Now tell the students that they should make up a story using all of the words in their set. The verbs can be conjugated as necessary. Allow ten minutes for students to produce a rough written version.

With a group that likes a challenge, you can stipulate that the words must appear in the story in alphabetical order, or in the order in which they were received.

One student from each group can tell the story, while students from other groups guess which words were part of the set.