Customer Reviews

Five-Minute Activities: A Resource Book of Short Activities (Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Five-minute Activities contains over 130 ideas for the foreign language classroom in its 100 pages. I read this book from cover to cover, and was pleased to be able to make many notes for my future lessons. Some of the activities are actually quite common, and perhaps most teachers would be aware of them, but there were many good ones that I'd never come across, including a few gems. Some are literally five-minute fillers, while others are worthy of spending maybe a whole lesson on. If I had to make a tentative criticism, it'd be that many of the suggestions have students generating language that would never be heard beyond the walls of an EFL classroom. For example, "A pencil is thinner than an elephant." I have mixed feelings about whether this is such a bad thing or not. On the one hand, students can practice structurally correct forms of language and learn whilst having fun. On the other hand, Five-minute Activities doesn't really present them with many opportunities to practise for situations in the real world, which may, of course, not be as fun. Also, I felt that there was a bias for activities that focused on self-disclosure, or competing to be the best in the class. Great, perhaps, for European or South American students of English, but not quite so good for students at my secondary school here in Japan. Overall, I'm pleased to have this book for reference, and I'd recommend it to most of my colleagues, even if some of the suggestions reminded me of what it used to be like as a pupil at a British elementary school.

I've had a copy of this book since 1995. I keep it in my bag of things for class as it helps to fill in those odd minutes of leftover time.

Here in China I find the activities can be used for much longer than 5 minutes.

I highly recommend it. Money well spent.

So, I was recommended this book, along with a couple dozen others, from my TESOL class. I FINALLY bought it here in Seoul and I'm happy to have the help with the ideas. Teachers have to be creative but it's nice to have the help. The only thing that I might have liked to see (and this is just to spoil me) is have the book broken down into their categories in the front of the book, instead of just the index...and by level. I still highly recommend the book because I don't see myself living without it again.

This book has been of limited usefullness for me. I've found only a few activities in here that would be practical for my classes of 40 Korean middle schoolers, but I also believe I'm in a bit of an unusual situation trying to teach English to such big classes. That being said, I did find it useful for, if nothing else, getting my own ideas rolling. I would also like to add that it's rather pricey for a flimsy little book, but I'm sure that if my situation were different it would have been well worth the money. I can pretty much recommend it to everyone EXCEPT those with unusually large class sizes, but it would be good for them too if they could find it used. Otherwise there are good resources to be found online for free.

This book contains many quick activities that require little preparation. It's a good tool for use in the EFL classroom. Many of the activities seem geared for middle school and up, though they can be easily adapted for elementary students. This book would be quicker to use if the activities were marked as appropriate for beginner, intermediate and advanced at the beginning of the description.

Sometimes we tachers are so tired after a week of hard work,that we can't think of a good warm up activity. That's when we needthis book , it has excellent ideas for all needs and purposes. I really like it. It's like a Bible to me.

This is an excellent tool for beginners and advanced teachers alike. This book helps you find ways to teach English, and while you are using it you will develop your own unique ways of changing their material to fit your needs.

I have already used some of the activities in class.
Oriented more to high school, and I have early college ESL

I taught adult EFL in Poland this summer, and this book was the most popular by far with all the teachers. Even if you don't use an activity straight out of the book, flipping through helped me generate ideas of my own. Yes, it very much depends on your students, class size, level, etc.--but what's new about that? The activities range from the true quickie "filler" to sound ideas on practicing grammar points. And yes, I did have to adapt most of the ideas, but that's nothing new either. It's pricey, but I think worth it.

This book has so many uses! It can be adapted for warm-up activities as well as filling in a few minutes at the end of a lesson. Many of the topics can be expanded into full lessons. Almost all the games can be used to strengthen a topic taught in a lesson in a fun and practical manner. No language teacher should be without this!