[esltiger]

In my previous school I have the same experience of really noisy classes and had a share of being questioned if I am teaching my classes English or just playing games. I reasoned out that it means my classes are enjoying their English class and that the students are not bored. Just make sure that it is not just a game for games sake. Also before doing any ESL games always remind your students not to be very noisy or you won't have games anymore.

[LSophie]

Hi, although this thread was posted in 2008, I wanted to share the same sentiment with the teacher. I also teach Junior High students in China in a class of 48-55 students. Since I wanted my classes to be interesting and more active, I let them play games to review vocabulary words and phrases. However, with the class size I cannot avoid students being noisy even though I kept reminding them in between the games not to shout to their group mates whenever they commit mistakes or when they wanted to help their group mates. Altough I was not told directly, I could see the facial expression of one English teacher at the next room when she peeped into my class. Students have so many books on their desks that it is hard for us to re-arrange the seats/desks during our class time. I hope some ESL teachers could share games & ideas they have especially for speaking classes that do not require rearranging seats and with less noise to make teaching-learning more interactive and interesting especially that they know a few English words and quite hard for them to understand the instructions. Some teachers/school leaders do not understand yet our purpose of conducting games to enhance language learning/usage and it adds to the difficulty faced by ESL teachers.