• An English-as-a-Foreign-Language, beginning-of-class warm up is a great way to start class and get students in an English-learning frame of mind. Many EFL students come to your classroom from an atmosphere where English is not spoken.

• Even if you are teaching EFL students , they have been chatting with friends, customers and co-workers all day in their native language. A simple warm up gets EFL students brains in the correct place and turns on those English synapses. Making class easier for the EFL students and for the all important EFL teacher.

• A warm up should be part of your everyday lesson plan and of course after your greeting is the first thing you do with your EFL students. It should be an easy exercise that all students can participate in. Participation of all students is important because this creates a fun focus on English in the classroom and gets the EFL students ready to listen to their teacher.

WHY WARM-UP?There are many reasons why you may need to use warm-ups while working as an EFL teacher:

to focus or bring energy to each class in the first ten to fifteen minutes

to break the ice with a new class of students

to fill a small block of time when a lesson runs shorter than you planned

to replace a lesson that students can't grasp or are bored with

to have on hand for emergencies such as broken audio-visual equipment or photocopiers

to use if you get called in last-minute to fill in for another teacher

Some aims of warming-up activities in class:

To create expectations about language

To give learners a reason to listen, read, speak orwrite

To motivate learners to want, to read or listen , speak or write

To involve learners by asking for their ideas orknowledge about a topic

To provide links between different stage of a lesson

To draw attention to something of importance

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

Students should know something about the topic before reading. Some topics may be unfamiliar to students, such as recreational activities at the beach if students have never been to the beach before. Pictures, drawings, or short skits can help develop relevant background information.

• GUESSING FROM PICTURES: The teacher finds 3 pictures or objects which are connected to the story and ask the students to guess how they are connected. Students read the text to check.

• QUOTATIONS: Find a quotation about the topic – try Students discuss the quotation. What does it mean? Do they agree with it? Why/Why not?

PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIESDuring the pre- listening phase, teachers need

to recognize that all students bring different backgrounds to the listening experience. Beliefs, attitudes, and biases of the listeners will affect the understanding of the message.

Before listening, students need assistance to activate what they already know about the ideas they are going to hear. Simply being told the topic is not enough. Pre- listening activities are required to establish what is already known about the topic, to build necessary background, and to set purpose(s) for listening

What’s your guess? Show eye-catching images, maps, or diagrams to help students guess the theme(s) of the listening text. Students can write pre-listening comprehension questions, then listen to see if their questions are answered.

What do I need to do, teacher? Write instructions in point form for the listening in the wrong order. Ask students to order them. This activity may help relax students for the listening, as they know exactly what is going to happen next.

PRE- WRITING ACTIVITIES

• Pre-writing tasks review and build students' knowledge of relevant vocabulary, relevant grammar points and, most importantly, students' background knowledge, since that is what really generates thoughtful and interesting written work. Pre-writing tasks are a crucial element of successful writing instruction.

• Chain FairytaleThis is a fun writing warm-up. Everyone has a piece of paper and writes the first sentence or two to start a fairytale (not one that already exists).Example: Once upon a time there was a frog that had no legs. He wanted to get married, but there were no female legless frogs in the land.After one minute the leader will say "SWITCH". At this time the writers have to put down their pens and pass the papers. They cannot finish their sentences. Then, the next writers will continue the story. After about ten minutes you will have as many silly stories to read as you have club members. The leader should warn the writers that they will soon have to wrap-up the story during the last two minutes so that each story has a conclusion. Read all of the stories out loud for a good laugh. You can extend this activity by trying to edit each other's writing and spelling errors.

RESOURCES

http://voices.yahoo.com/class-warm-ups-english-as-second-language-students-605115.html?cat=4

http://www.eslflow.com/speakingandcommunicativeicebreakeractivities.html

http://www.englishclub.com/english-clubs/english-club-warm-up.htm

http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1657-07902008000200002

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