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Teaching Young english esl Learners Vocabulary and Grammar with Games Can Be Fun…….. young learners have high energy levels and short attention spans but, these six games will keep your students attention, and make learning vocabulary and grammar fun for you and them. Six "FUN” Games to Incorporate Into Your Classroom…… These six games can be structured to any english, as a second language, ability level and the targeted language structure. Category Chant This is a fun activity for students to learn, and understand nouns and adjectives. It really grabs the attention of young learners. To begin the games instruct the students to sit cross legged, in a circle, on the floor. The teacher sits crossed legged with them. Start the game with a rhythm sequence of slapping your knees, clapping your hands, and pausing. At the pause sequence, announce a category such as, 'Noun', ‘Adjective’, or 'Verb'. Once again do the sequence-slap your knees, clap your hands and pause, and say; 'Food". The student to your right names a food- noun. Continue the sequence around the circle with the rheumatic slap, clap, and pause with students naming nouns, verbs, or adjectives. When the circle comes around to you again, change the category subject. Students, who cannot think of a word during the pause, fall out of the circle, until the next go-around. This game can be used for vocabulary word reinforcement. You can incorporate nouns, verbs, and descriptive adjectives as the category. This is a fun way for students to learn nouns, verbs, adjectives and vocabulary words. For intermediate students you can make the categories harder and relevant to the lessons being taught in class. 20 questions Game A student thinks of a vocabulary word, noun, verb or adjective that they have been learning in class, or you can provide the words the lesson centers on for this activity. Next, the rest of the class gets 20 questions to ask the student, eliciting clues, to guess what word the student has chosen. It is best, during this activity be sure to set ground rules of using full sentences to ask and answer questions. The student who guesses the correct answer gets to take the next turn. Mix-Up Game This activity motivates children to use the correct sentence structure, pronunciation, and punctuation. The sentences can be structured for any language level. For Beginner ESOL students, write an easy mixed up sentence on the board such as, jump/can/she. (She can jump.) The students write the sentence in their notebooks and say "Mix-Up" when they have written the correct sentence. The student who says Mix Up first, gets to write the next mixed up sentence on the board. Describe and Guess Game This is a fun activity to use to learn descriptive adjectives. The teacher creates a list of different descriptive adjectives and writes them on the board, including; colors, shapes, sizes, and textures. One student comes to the front of the class and describes an unknown object, which is in a paper bag, by feeling it. The student uses the key descriptive words written on the board for descriptive clues to describe the item to the rest of the class. The other class members try to guess the object in the paper bag. Whoever guesses correctly gets the next turn. Art-Share Game This is a good activity to play to learn pronouns and adjectives. Instruct the students to draw self-portraits of their selves and include three important people or items in their life. After they have created their masterpieces have them come to the front of the class and describe their artwork to the class. The other students can ask questions about their art work. The students can discuss similarities and interests they may have, which came up during the showing their art work. Display the students’ artwork in the classroom to create a warm and welcoming classroom atmosphere for them. You can write descriptive adjectives on the board and instruct the students to include as many of these in their created masterpieces as possible. Pronunciation Game Divide the class into two teams. Choose a set of three words that sound alike such as; make, take, bake and write them on the board. One student from the first team stands at the board and the other student from the second team stands with you. Show the student who is near you one of the words that you have written on a sheet of paper, which correlates with a word on the board. They say the word, you've shown them, on the written piece of paper out loud. The student at the board circles the word they hear. If the student circles the correct word they get a point. Switch team members and change the words. The team with the most points wins. This game is fun and fast paced which keeps the students attention. These are just six fun games that can be incorporated into your esl lesson plans, there are many more. Many helpful online esl web-sites exist where you can find fun game ideas and incorporate them into you lesson plans. Fun, attention getting activity and game books are specifically written to aid the beginner and experienced esl teacher. These are just six games that keep the young learners, as well as the intermediate esl students, attention. REFERENCES: 1. Harmer, Jeremy (2007) How to teach english 2. Dave’s esl Café (2012): Lessons For teachers (http://daveseslcafe.com) 3. esl Library (2012): Games For esl Students (http://esllibrary.com) 4. Total esl (2012/: Games and Activities for esl teachers (http://totalesl. com)