What is happening when students are walking around the classroom speaking to each other seemingly at random? It’s OK! This is a “mingle” – a common technique in teaching in general, and a very popular activity in the ELT classroom. Whether you’re a new teacher or a teacher with many years of experience, a mingle is a great way to get students practicing English.
Hal Houston, a teacher in Taiwan and a textbook writer, gives some strengths of the technique, explains the procedures, and gives some ideas of mingle activities.
A taster is below, but for all the detail and explanation read the full article in the IH Journal here.
Why do we love the mingle?
- It provides valuable speaking practice
- It lets students individualise their learning
- It allows students to stretch their legs and get the blood flowing back to their brain
- It helps students speak to classmates they don’t usually work with
- It’s highly flexible
How to make it a success
- Before the mingle – prepare the room and explain the basic rules (stand up, speak, etc)
- During the mingle – join in yourself and encourage interactions
- After the mingle – wrap up and summarise
How to mix things up
- Play some upbeat music
- Put students into two lines facing each other, they mingle with their opposite for a minute, then move on.
- Have half of the class move around, and the other half remain seated.
- Put students into teams, set a goal, and a prize to the team who gets there first.
Mingle Activities
Find Someone Who
A classic mingle activity, with a worksheet with “Find someone who likes jazz”, “Find someone who hasn’t been to Italy”, etc You can turn this into a BINGO game, with a prize for the winner.
Learning Names
A good mingle activity for the first week of class is learning names.
Personal Questions
Students think of a question they want to ask their classmates, write it down, and mingle to ask it.
Compliments
Do a mingle where students go around and compliment each other.
Guess the Answer
Ask each student to think of an answer to a question, then in a mingle find somebody who can think of the question for that answer.
Role Play
Expand a mingle into a simple role play.
Review
Students take a word or phrase that they would like to commit to memory. They practice saying it a few times to themselves, then mingle, sharing their words and phrases with others.
We hope you found this interesting. For all the detail and explanation read the full article in the IH Journal here.