10 Fun Activities for Online Language Teaching

By Yan Weng (CEO & Cofounder of Funclass | Harvard M.Ed | 7 years of online education experience)

Looking for fun activities for your online language classes? Then this blog is for you! Get ready to explore 10 incredibly engaging activities that will bring a whole new level of fun to your virtual language sessions.

1. Interactive Story Building

Foster creativity and language expression by collectively building a story. You can start with a sentence and have each student contribute the next part. As the story unfolds, students practice constructing sentences, using vocabulary, and maintaining coherence. Let the imagination be wild! Sometimes it might turn out to be a hilarious story!

2. Language Karaoke

Transform language practice into a lively karaoke session! Similar to the story-building game, you can give a theme of the song, and ask each student to take turns to write a line of the lyrics. At the end of the song composition, you can even try to sing it aloud!

3. Vocab Chess

Divide the students into two groups. Create a digital 6 x 6 grid filled with words or phrases in the target language. The student representative from each group takes turns to call out definitions or descriptions of a word in the grid, and the rest of the team has to guess which word the student representative is describing. If they guess it right, they can take the word. If not, the opposite team will take the word. The way to win the game is to form a line of 3 words in the grid first. The line can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. It's a fantastic way to reinforce vocabulary in a game-like format.

4. Who is the Spy

This is a deduction game where players try to figure out who among them is the spy. This game is most suitable for 4~10 students. First, pick two words with similar meanings, like KFC and McDonalds. Then give the majority of the students one of the words, and the rest the other. For example, among 6 students, 4 get McDonalds, and 2 get KFC. The minority will be the spies. Students take turns to describe the word they are given. After each round, students vote on who they think the spy is and the player with the most votes will be out. Then a new round begins till all the spies are identified. When there are only 2 players left, if one of them is a spy, then the spy team wins. The game encourages communication, observation, and strategic thinking, making it a fun and engaging group activity for online sessions.

5. Language Charades

Incorporate the classic game of charades into your language lessons. Send a word or phrase personally to a student in the chat. The student has to act out the word or phrase without speaking, and their classmates try to guess the correct answer in the target language. It’s an amazing way to engage your students in physical movements.

6. Verbal Charades

This is a verbal version of the Charade game, which might be more friendly for students who are too shy to act. Instead of acting out the word or phrase, students have to describe the word verbally. You can do it in a team competition, where a team leader describes the word, while the rest of the teammates guess the answer. Set a timer, and let’s see which team can rack up the most correct guesses before time runs out.

7. Emoji Storytelling

Challenge students to express a story or a sentence using only emojis related to the lesson's vocabulary. This activity enhances creativity, comprehension, and the ability to convey meaning with limited resources. For example, can you make up a story based on these emojis?

🚀🌌👾🛸🎭🎉

8. Letter-based Role Play

Divide students into groups of 4-5 students. For each group, give them a creative scenario, like a retired superhero reunion or an AI robot rebellion. Students can choose a role by themselves and take turns to improvise a show based on the given scenario. To add more challenge, particularly when teaching languages with Latin letters, you can introduce a letter-based twist. Shuffle the letters and prompt each student to start their sentences with a word beginning with the designated letter. For instance, if the letter is X, students might find it tricky, but perhaps they can kick things off with a word like "X-ray." This linguistic exercise adds an engaging and amusing layer to the improvisational activity.

9. Online Debate Club

Debates are also a great activity to make your language lessons more lively! Pick a topic that gets students talking, give students different roles, and let them share their opinions and back up their arguments in the language you're teaching. Breakout rooms are awesome for letting students prep and chat with each other before the debate kicks off. It's a fun way to boost language skills while keeping things interesting and interactive!

10. Word Dash Challenge

Divide the class into multiple groups. Give each group a prompt and the students in each group have to take turns to name a word that matches the prompt. For example, name a word related to Christmas. Then give each group 1 minute and the group that comes up with most words wins the game. This game helps students effectively retrieve and practice words in the target language.

And there you go! 10 fun and engaging activities to spice up your language teaching! Go and try with your students and let us know which is your students' favorite one.

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