- Fizz-buzz. Go round the class counting up in French. When you get to a number with 5 in or a multiple of 5, say FIZZ. For numbers with a 7 in or a multiple of 7, say BUZZ. Pupils must say FIZZ-BUZZ for numbers such as 35 or 57. This can also be played in groups.
- Play the Countdown numbers game. This is also good for practising arithmetical terms such as "multipliė par". By the way, the teacher does not have to get the answers! Good for intermediate and advanced level.
- Play mental arithmetic bingo. Instead of just giving a number, read out a simple sum which leads to the number
- Play "Irish Bingo". In this game all pupils stand up. When they hear a number on their card they must sit down. Last person standing wins.
- Do complex mental arithmetic problems. Read out a series of simple operations. Pupils write them down and winners are ones who get them right. They need to be lengthy!
- Play original bingo. Still the best?
- Aural anagrams of spelt out numbers. Teacher reads out an anagram. Pupils write down letters. First one to get the right number wins. You can make it harder by getting pupils to do them in their heads.
For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought. ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).
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