If you’re looking for some ESL sentence making activities or games, then you’re certainly in the right place. We have lots of those, along with sentence structure lessons plans, sentence building worksheets, online practice recommendations and a whole lot more. Read on for some ESL awesome!
Sentence making ESL games
ESL Sentence Making Activities and Games
Let’s get into the best ESL sentence structure games.
#1: Board Games for Sentence Making
If you ask my students, they’ll tell you that I love board games! I use them in my English classes around once a month and the good news is that the students really enjoy them too.
If you want to help your students with making sentences, then you can fill the board with either questions or answers. Students have to do the opposite by making a complete sentence when they land on that square.
The good news is that it’s super to make your own in just a few minutes for just about any topic. Find out how: TEFL Board Games.
#2: Error Correction Race
#3: The Disappearing Sentence Game
A nice sentence making activity for English beginners is this one! The way it works is that you write a sentence on the board, using whatever target grammar you’re teaching. It’s ideal for helping students with language chunks, or groups of words that are often found together.
Then, students have to say the sentence out loud together. Erase a word or two and they say it again. Eventually, they’ll say the entire thing but nothing will be written on the board.
#4: Dialogue Substitution
#5: Sentence Making Activity With Pictures
One of the best sentence making writing activities is this simple one that uses a picture. Put it up on the PowerPoint and then have students make a certain number of sentence about what they see. Circulate around the class offering some individual help and it’s the perfect choice for your English classes.
#6: Role Plays Sentence Building Activity
One of the best things to do with beginners is a role play. The way it works is that you give a pair of students the beginning of a conversation with some blanks in it. Then, students have to fill in the blanks and finish off the conversation.
After that, I give students some time to memorize it and then they have to perform it in front of the class.
#7: Is that Sentence Correct?
An easy way to practice some sentence structure is this quick error correction activity. Make up some sentences with your target grammar. Some of them should have errors while others do not. Then, students have to decide if it’s correct, and if not, make whatever changes are necessary.
It’s a simple way to review just about anything and also makes a nice homework activity. Try it out today! It’s also a nice option to teach English online.
This can be useful for something like reviewing transitive and intransitive phrasal verbs which can be a little bit tricky.
#8: ESL Surveys
Just ask my students and they’ll tell you that I’m ALL about surveys. I like to use them at least a couple of times throughout the semester and sometimes even more often.
They’ve ideal because they cover a range of skills, get students out of their seats and can also hit the target grammar for making sentences in a big way. Find out more about them here:
#9: Flashcards and Making Sentences
If you teach kids, never set foot in a classroom without a stack of flashcards. Joking but not entirely! They’re some serious ESL teaching gold and are perfect for helping students with building sentences.
There are lots of ideas so check them out here: ESL Flashcards.
#10: Mixed Up Sentences
One of the best sentence making games you can play is this one. The way it works is that there are a bunch of sentences but the word order is mixed up. The first team to unscramble all the sentences is the winner.
#11: Vocabulary Auction ESL Sentence Making Game
#12: Steal the Eraser
Check out one of my favourite ESL review games that’s ideal for helping students work on English sentence structure. It’s fun, engaging, interactive and I think your students will love it as much as mine do! It’s best for beginners who can make one simple sentence in response to a question. Find out more here:
#13: Two Truths and a Lie for ESL
This is a quick ESL sentence structure activity that also makes a nice icebreaker. You’ve probably played it before? You have to come up with two sentences that are true and one that is a lie about yourself. The other people have to guess which one is false. Check it out:
Two Truths and a Lie ESSL Game
#14: Simple Past Affirmative Negative
The past simple affirmative and negative can can get a little bit tricky when you factor in irregular verbs, negative statements, as well as question forms. That’s why I like to spend some time on this, even with intermediate level students. Here are some of the top options:
Simple Past Affirmative Negative ESL Activities.
#15: Running Dictation
Try out this engaging 4-skills ESL activity to work on building better sentences with your students:
Sentence Structure ESL Lesson Plans
If you’re a busy ESL teacher then you’ll know and love those lesson plans that are ready to just print off and use in your classes. Of course. That’s why we have some recommendations for the best sentence building ESL lesson plans:
Sentence Building Worksheets
If you want to help your students with sentence structure, then they’ll of course need lots of practice! That’s where these worksheets can come in. Here are some of our top picks:
Sentence making activities and games
Online Sentence Making Practice
If your students want to do some extra practice with sentence building on their own, there are a number of great resources that you might want to recommend to them. Here are some of the top picks:
Did you Like these ESL Sentence Making Games?
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Bolen, Jackie (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 87 Pages - 10/24/2019 (Publication Date)
Yes? Then you’re going to love this book over on Amazon: 39 No-Prep/Low-Prep ESL Grammar Activities. It’s the book you need for teaching grammar to English learners in the best way possible—with a wide variety of interesting and engaging games and activities.
Keep a copy on the bookshelf in your office to use as a handy reference guide. Or, consider taking a copy with you on your tablet, phone or laptop to your favourite coffee shop for some serious lesson planning on the go. Yes. It really is that easy to have better English classes.
Check out the book for yourself over on Amazon, but only if you want to get yourself a serious dose of ESL teaching awesome in your life:
Have your Say about ESL Sentence Building Activities and Games
Did you like these ESL sentence making activities and games? Have you tried out any from this list or do you have another that you’d like to recommend? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you.
Also be sure to give this article a share on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. It’ll help other busy English teachers, like yourself find this great teaching resource.
If you’re looking for some conversation questions, you’ll definitely want to check this out:
English Conversation Questions
Last update on 2022-06-17 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
