Customer Reviews

Intermediate Communication Games

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I use this book in my ESL classes in Japan. It has a lot of great photocopiable material for us artistically challenged language teachers! Aside from the great illustrations it has: mercifully short descriptions of how to conduct each activity, what you need, what the minimum number of students is and a list of key vocabulary that ought to be pre-taught before using the excercise. The exercises are listed by function taught and there's also a pretty good structural and lexical index included. Sometimes, however, the activities in the book might include grammar or vocabulary that your class may not be up to speed on. I've always been able to tweak the material to match my classes, though.

"Communication Games Intermediate" is a great book for some communicative activities that can be used to target particular structures or for just some great relief from the routine of class. The games are imaginative and fun, for the most part. Some are a bit two-dimensional, but they all require a good level of communication from the students.

In answer to the another reviewer's comment on the copying and cutting needed, (which is an accurate observation for the larger classes), one way around it is copy onto card and just keep the copies when possible. For example, some of the games need lots of pictures cut out. These can be copied onto coloured paper or card and kept after the lesson. This way, you can re-use them again, with no such problems.

One flaw with the book is the cover of it. It is very flimsy, and will soon be creased and possibly torn. It has happened to a couple of copies of the book that I have used, due to the heavy use of the book by the teachers. You may want to strengthen the front and rear covers with some heavy duty self-adhesive covering plastic.

Other than that, it is a great book with lots of different activities to use. It is a regular feature in my own teaching, and I have a drawer or two full of pre-copied activities.

Just a quick note of warning:

Activity #28, "The Queue" is a great idea, and a lot of fun as a 5 minute activity. It involves giving each student a card from a jumbled list and sorting themselves into a queue. However, in the photocopiable pages there are two places in the queue that repeat themselves. I only discovered this when it was pointed out to me by some of my students, causing some embarrassment.