Kahoot – A Wonderful Online ESL Conversation Activity

Fun and Effective ESL Conversation Activity Quizzes with Kahoot App4

Duration: 5-10 minutes

Type: Whole Group/Small Groups

What you will need:

  1. A device for each group or individual
  2. A pre-prepared Kahoot quiz

Overview

You create a quiz in Kahoot focusing on the content and/or language objectives for the class. Each group or individual student needs a device to access to the Kahoot quiz. Students get in small groups and compete to answer the questions you have set up.

How to organize the activity:

1. Log in to the Kahoot website here: kahoot.com

2. Create a quiz by hitting the CREATE button at the top of the screen which will take you to a screen that looks like this:

3. Add your questions, multiple choice answers, time limit, picture or video (Youtube), and the number of points the question is worth.

4. When you're done, you can start your quiz. When you click on your quiz to start it, you get a choice between "Classic" mode and "Team Mode". Classic mode is for when each student has his or her own device. Classic mode would be the mode to choose for online learning. Team Mode is the mode I would choose for in-class quizzes because it requires students to discuss their decisions together which really increases the amount of English they need to use.

You'll also see options like the ones below that you can set for your quiz. If you want to save a little time, choose the "Friendly nickname generator" so that students don't spend a bunch of time choosing nicknames for themselves when you want to start the quiz.

5. After you have started the quiz, you will get a Quiz ID and a link which you will need to provide to your students. Students go to the link, put in the quiz ID and they are good to go.

6. Students attempt to answer questions in the amount of time you chose for the time limit when you set up the quiz.

7. The question screen looks like this: (in this example, the picture you see that is blocked out is slowly revealed over until time runs out.)

8. Students answer by choosing the option that matches the answer they believe is correct.

9. It's always fun to have some kind of a reward for the winner or some silly consequence for the losers. You could let the winners take a victory lap around the classroom while everyone claps. Or, the losers could be required to do 10 pushups or jumping jacks.

10. However you do it, you can get some great practice with vocabulary, speaking and reading in the process.

Benefits:

  • Very engaging activity that can make using academic vocabulary and speech fun and memorable.
  • You can get all students involved at the same time.
  • Students can create their own Kahoot quizzes based on what they are learning for other students to play, furthering the independence and ownership of the activity.
  • Many ESL experts laud this app's effectiveness, from Carol Salva (see this article) to Katie Toppel. Carol Salva is a master at using Kahoot. Check out her webinar on Kahoot here.

Have you tried this activity? How did it go? Leave your comments below!

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