9 Entertaining ESL Homework Ideas to Improve Your Students’ Language Skills

In other classrooms, students run out the first chance they get.

But not in your class.

You’re just wrapping up class when you hear someone call out from the back of the room, “Please, please, teacher, you forgot to give us some homework!”

Under normal circumstances, that might seem highly unusual, but not when you make homework fun and engaging.

In fact, it’s possible to assign homework to your ESL students that will have them begging for more. How? The first step is to assign homework that works.

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Assigning homework that works isn’t as hard as you might think, especially if you focus on the following points.

So how do you include those elements in homework assignments for your ESL students? I’m so glad you asked.

Gossip? Isn’t that something mature people avoid? Not when the stories are all fabricated for the sake of language learning.

Talking over the phone is a real challenge for second language learners, so this fun activity will give them some practice.

Make up a story and write it out for one student, or simply tell one student before class lets out for the day. For homework, that student will call another student and relay the story to him or her. The second student calls someone else and does the same and so on and so on until every student in class has heard the gossip for homework. (Write out a list of student names and phone numbers and hand it out to each student. Then each person can simply call the next person down on the list.)

The following day, give students a questionnaire to see how much correct information was passed along.

Not everyone thinks coffee makes the world go round, but even coffee haters will love this homework assignment.

Send your students to a coffee shop or a restaurant to practice their speaking or listening skills. Depending on the level of your students and what skills you want them to practice, you might ask them to do any of the following while they’re at the restaurant.

What do your students really care about? Give them a chance to talk about it in front of the class. Here’s how.

Have each person choose something they’re passionate about, something they might consider themselves an expert on.

Challenge students to think of a creative way to present five must-know facts about that subject. They might make a movie, create a poster or brochure, write a song, put on a skit, etc.

Have each person present their creative project to the class, and then give the class five minutes to ask questions of the presenter.

Set certain parameters like students must speak in complete sentences or require that every student ask at least two questions at some point during the presentations.

Students will love sharing about their passions, and they’ll get some great speaking, listening and discourse information in the process, as well as teach the rest of the class some interesting vocabulary.

Do you like to people watch? There are so many fun and interesting things you can learn from simply watching the people around you, and there are plenty of places for good people-watching: a restaurant, a park, a mall, public transportation, sporting event.

I’m sure you can think of a dozen more. And there are plenty of ways to tie language use to people watching.

Students don’t have to spend lots of money to have fun with this homework assignment. Send students out to the store of their choice or the local mall for these fun assignments.

Give each person one hundred classroom bucks to spend on items from all the catalogs (except their own) and see who in class has the best sales.

Can you legitimately send students to the movies for homework? You can when you’re teaching ESL.

Your students don’t have to commit to a full-length movie. Instead, you can use the videos on FluentU to screen mini-lessons using clips from TV shows and movies, trailers, news segments, vlogs or anything else that your students are interested in.

Use these videos in the classroom or assign homework to watch a few and complete the subsequent quizzes. You can also ask students to complete flashcard quizzes based on vocabulary words you want them to pay special attention to. These quizzes are adaptable so every student will have a unique experience catered to his learning level.

You don’t have to worry about students getting stuck on unfamiliar words: Not only are videos organized by difficulty level, but they also come with interactive subtitles that show contextual definitions on demand, let learners see other videos where the word appears and give them the option to add the word as a flashcard.

Students can choose to use FluentU in their browser or in the iOS or Android apps.

There are plenty of ways to use a movie for language development. And whether students watch a new release or catch an old Elvis flick on TV, they can do any of the following activities.

I’m sure you also have your favorite movie-related language activities and many work as homework assignments. So get creative with how you have students share about what they watched.

For the most part, people are willing to help someone in need, and that is doubly true for someone who needs to complete an assignment for school.

That’s why sending students out to interview native speakers is such a fun homework assignment.

Start by helping your students write a survey they’ll use for their interviews. Students can choose a topic or you can assign one, like leisure activities or celebrity news.

Tell students to list five to ten questions they might ask on that topic that will elicit specific answers. For example, if students chose celebrity news, they might ask how many celebrities a person follows on Twitter or if they watch an entertainment news program and, if so, how often.

Once students have their list, have them work with two other students to choose the three to five best questions to include on their survey.

Students should type up their questions and make one copy for each person they intend to interview. Ten is usually a good number.

As a class, discuss how students might introduce themselves to a person they encounter and would like to interview. You can write out an introduction based on your discussion and have students practice it with each other in class.

Then send students out to their interviews. Rather than having their interviewees write answers on the survey, students should ask their questions and then write down the responses they get. (It’s a language activity, after all.)

Back in class, have students assimilate and represent their data and present it to the class.

Music can do anything from relax us to invigorate us to help us fall in love. Who doesn’t love to listen to music?

Music is good for English learners, too, since it stresses many aspects of language that can otherwise be hard to isolate.

Have students choose some English songs to listen to for homework and then do the following:

Have you played the game Apples to Apples? If you have, you know part of the fun is in just how subjective the game is. And sending students on a photo scavenger hunt can encompass the same type of fun.

Give individual students or groups of up to three students a list of items to find on their scavenger hunt. But instead of being specific in your list (for example, including items such as cat), be descriptive in your list.

You might include items such as something frightening, something beautiful, something quiet, etc.

Students find items they think fit the description. For example, someone who is claustrophobic might choose an elevator for something frightening. They then take a picture of it.

The next day, have each person get with a partner and show them the pictures they took for each item on the list.

If the connection is not obvious, students should ask their partner to explain why they chose a particular item, such as the elevator.

As long as students can explain the connections between their pictures and the scavenger hunt items, they score a point for each one.

If a student thinks an item is too much of a stretch, have another pair of students cast votes and go with two out of three opinions.

No matter what you believed in your student days, homework doesn’t have to be boring. With a little creativity when assigning homework, you might find that the activities you assign for outside of class become the highlights of your students’ days.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)