Student success: C1 and C2

Super congratulations to Sara C, who passed her C2 Proficiency exam with flying colours (Grade A), and Enrico DM, who passed his C1 Advanced.

Two pieces of splendid news on the same day!

Making the hangman game more student-centred

It came about from a spontaneous idea when I was teaching earlier this afternoon. It was with a group of Pre-Intermediate young teens - we were working on vocabulary on the topic of 'food' (ways of cooking, to be precise).

The students were doing a matching task with visuals. Based on what I've seen, most students usually struggle with 'oven', 'pan' and 'saucepan' (word and pronunciation), which were shown by the visuals on the coursebook page. So I decided to devise a hangman game on the spot. From my past observations, this game tends to be teacher-centred in that each student would be given a turn to say a letter while others would sit around and wait for their turn.

With that in mind, I was thinking of ways of making the hangman game more student-centred. Why couldn't my students have the answers and let their classmates guess the word?

• I drew an oven, a (frying) pan and a saucepan on the whiteboard.
• I wrote the answers on pieces of paper.
• I gave each student a piece of paper with the answer. (like an information-gap activity)
  
• I asked my students to copy what was on the whiteboard.
• I let my students play the hangman game in groups.

The result? Compared to the lockstep, teacher-fronted format, the level of student engagement was much higher. It generated some excitement among my students when they were down to the last chance. Poor hangman - two casualties and two close calls!