Sentence Tennis

'Sentence Tennis' game is designed by Ms. Imogen Custance from Kwansei Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan. I came to know about this activity from an event conducted by BELTA, THT and Eastern University on 14-15 September 2018.

Concept and Theory:

According to Ms. Custance, 'Sentence Tennis' is an activity that encourages learners to produce language rapidly, but also accurately, and with increasing complexity, as students compete to make sentences longer, whilst maintaining accuracy. This activity can be adapted for students working at different levels and requires nothing more than a teacher with a good memory.[Developing Dynamism in the language Classroom, September 14-15, 2018, BELTA-EU-THT English Language Education Program]

Basic Procedure:

The teacher will tell a sentence. On the other hand, s/he can write the sentence on a computer showing the visual on screen. The students will enlarge the sentence randomly using new vocabulary, complex and compound sentence structures etc. A good typing speed can be beneficial for the teacher to run this activity on projector smoothly. It's better to give a time frame of 10 seconds to jump over every next sentence. If anyone makes a mistake then she/he will be out from the game and the teacher will tell a new sentence to run the activity.

Participants Opinions:

However, some participants proposed that it would better to do the same activity on vocabulary ( antonym vs synonym) where pupils' English doesn't have that level to make sentences continuously. Later on, they can move on to the main activity after a time.

Overall, the participants found this activity very effective. They were very enthusiastic to apply this activity in their classrooms.