By Kevin Fabris

February 25, 2016

Cards, Classroom Language Cards, Easy ESL Games, easyeslgames.com, EFL, EFL games, ESL, Fun, Printable Resources

How To Teach Classroom Language To ESL Students - Easy ESL Games

Teaching classes for young children & babies can be difficult to say the least. If students have little or no English foundation, teachers are left searching for ways to connect their lesson  targets to the information their students already have.

Unfortunately, young ESL students rarely have any English language foundation to connect with.

So what’s a teacher to do?

 It turns out, the answer is simple. Young learners can easily make connections through the use of TPR. The Total Physical Response method for language learning involves keyword prompting (from the teacher) and whole body responses (from the students). Basically, by combining a word or phrase with an action, students will internalize and understand the word or phrase much easier than if they tried to learn through rote memorization.

With this in mind we are really excited to share our Classroom Language Cards with you. Each card has a useable and relevant word or phrase written on it and an accompanying action. For example our “I don’t know” card is accompanied by a picture of the monkey shrugging his shoulders.

Shrugging your shoulders works to effectively pantomime the phrase “I don’t know” in almost every language on earth. More than likely this will include your student’s native language as well. The TRP connects the key word with it’s meaning and your students learn faster!


These Classroom Language Cards have become an integral part of our young learner curriculum. We simply go through the deck using the 2 – 1 – 0 method in each class. After a few weeks of repetition the difference in our student’s abilities were obvious.

We use these cards because these cards work!

  • They are a great classroom resource.
  • You can use them in every lesson.
  • They help your EFL / ESL students form a foundation of contextual classroom English. 

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