5 Modals Games and Activities for ESL/EFL | How to Teach Modal Verbs to English Learners

If you’re looking for some modal verb activities, games, worksheets or lesson plans, then you’re certainly in the right place. Find out all of our tips and tricks for teaching modal verbs the awesome way. It's modals made easy and you won't regret having a watch! ------------------- • Have a look at one of my favourite ESL review activities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49gRYbDrqBQ • Teaching English Modal Verbs: Draw the Sentence by: @TEFL & TESOL Courses - ITTT https://youtu.be/2bh9rJ7xQKc ------------------------- More teaching modal verb activities: https://www.eslactivity.org/modal-verbs/ Want to find 39 Low-Prep/ No Prep ESL activities? Check out my book: https://amzn.to/3eHqWRo ------------------------ https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ https://www.instagram.com/jackie.bolen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@englishwithjackie?lang=en #esl #teachingEnglish #teachingenglishwithjackie #modalsgames Timestamp 0:00 Intro 0:17 Surveys 1:07 Secret job 2:10 Two truths and a lie 2:47 Advice activity 3:23 Songs and chants 3:44 Conclusion Transcript for TEFL modal games and activities: Today I'm going to talk about my favourite ESL modal games and activities. By modals, I mean the words like: can, could, may, might, will, etc. My first game that I like to use for modals is surveys. So surveys are great for ability. On my piece of paper, I write down a bunch of questions related to ability. Can you play soccer? Can you speak three languages, etc.? Then students have to go around the class asking their classmates, "Can you speak three languages?" If someone says yes, they have to write down that person's name, and then ask a follow-up question. For example, what languages do you speak? Oh, I speak French, English, and Korean and then they would write french, English, and Korean. If their classmate says no, they have to ask them another question on that list. So it's very simple to make your own surveys just based on whatever the topic is and the level, etc. but it works very very well with ability is a nice topic. The next one is the secret job. So I get students to work in pairs, most often in bigger classes and they have to think of a secret job and then write down some sentences as hints. They have to think about the job, and what the people have to do. So for example a teacher has to help people and they could write a more general or more specific question, kind of depending on what they want. But i say you shouldn't say they have to teach people because it's too obvious so they should give a little bit more of a general one. Teachers don't have to drive a car, they can get to school without driving a car. Teachers don't have to use dangerous tools and then teachers mustn't be mean. So you can think of any hints that you want and then after all the students have done that, they can join together with another group and then they give the hints to each other. Or, in smaller classes, you could just do this together as a whole class. The next game is two truths and a lie. It's really good for ability. So students have to think of two true statements about what they can do and then one false statement about what they can do. So for example, I can cook Korean food, I can play tennis well, and I can play the piano. Then students would have to quiz me. I usually give about two or three minutes for this to try to catch me and which one is the lie. And they would know probably that it was piano because they would ask me a question about something and I would have no idea about anything piano-related so they would know for sure. The next one is an advice activity. So for this, I taught university students in South Korea so I would generally come up with a problem: a high school student is studying lots, they're super burnt out, they're tired, they can't sleep at night and I would read out this problem to the students or give them a handout with a problem and they could read it themselves. Then in groups of say two or three, they have to come up with advice for that student and then I would get students to read out their advice to another group or just together as the whole class if we have a smaller class and then we would vote on the best advice for that student. The last one is songs and chants so have a look on YouTube for all the modals. There are so many great songs and so many great chants that are so useful for teaching kids. So I'm not musical, not to worry, I just use YouTube and it's no problem. Sometimes i even see the students singing along to that song outside of class which is amazing. Leave a comment below saying your favourite ESL modal game or activity. Tags: 5 Modals Games, modals activities, modals activity sheets, modals game, what is a modal verb, modal verbs activity, TEFL activities, TEFL classroom, classroom tips, Low prep activity, classroom activities,