Card Games with ESL Class

Go Fish is a popular choice and one of the card games you can adapt to suit many different grammar points. To make the game more adaptable, simply use cards with verbs in their base form (eat, drink, buy, live). Have two sets of verb cards, so you have two of each verb. You can play the game in pairs or in small groups. Each student is dealt five to seven cards (the remaining cards are placed in a stack at the center) and has to ask a question in the correct grammar tense in order to find the pair. So, if you’re practicing questions with ever, and Student A has a card with the verb be, he/she asks, “Have you ever been to ….?” If student B has the card with the verb be, he/she must say, “Yes, I have” and hand it over. If not, he/she says, “No, I haven’t! Go fish!”, thus prompting Student A to take a card from the stack of remaining cards. For another great spin on the Go Fish card game, check out this worksheet.