Jump to the Right/Left

This activity combines identifying mistakes in sentences with kinesthetic activity. It takes little preparation and gets students up and about in class.

Preparation

Decide what vocabulary (or grammatical structure) you want to use. Prepare grammatically correct and incorrect sentences that focus on the particular vocabulary or grammatical structure. E.g., (present perfect) I haven’t ever been there. I haven’t ever made a cake. (present tense questions) Do you likes apples? Do you read often?

Procedure

1. Ask the students to stand in a line, one behind the other. 2. Stand on a chair — or somewhere you can be seen and heard — in front of the students. Make sure that you have control over the class. 3. Tell the students that you are going to read sentences or questions that may or may not have mistakes in them. They must jump to the right if they think the sentence is correct, and to the left if the sentence is incorrect. 4. If student(s) jump to the left, have one give the corrected version. 5. Keep repeating this activity over the course of the lesson, but note down the mistakes they make and use the sentences again.

When to Use It

• To raise awareness of common errors among students • To review content • To get the whole class involved at once

Level

Depending on material

Skills

Practice

Materials

A list of sentences to be read

Preparation Time

Varies

Activity Time

5–10 minutes

Variations

1. This activity can be used with any kind of common language mistake: lexical, grammatical, syntactical, or pragmatic. 2. Students can write the sentences. 3. Have students clap if the sentence is correct; do nothing if it’s incorrect.