If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you need an activity NOW. Maybe an activity fell flat, or your students whipped through it faster than expected. Whatever happened, you find yourself with a spare 5-10 minutes at the end of class.
This is why when I talk about lesson planning I recommend including a couple of extra activities.
But what if you blew through all of those extra, just-in-case activities? What do you do? You don’t have any materials prepped!
Calm down. Take a deep breath. All you really need is a deck of cards to get your students talking, thinking, and practicing English—no extras required.
This saves your sanity and keeps students engaged. Plus, it’s actually fun for everyone.
Forget searching for special resources or scrambling for last-minute copies. These quick card games hand you five easy ways to get everyone involved, whether you teach kids, teens, or adults.
Grab those cards and try something new in your lesson today!
Why Use a Deck of Cards for TEFL Activities
A deck of cards can work magic in your English classes. You can use cards for speaking, listening, reading, and vocabulary activities, all with one simple tool.
Benefits of Card-Based Language Learning
Cards give you a lot of flexibility. Each card can mean something different, so you can change up your activities if students start to lose interest.
Cards can stand for words, actions, or questions. They keep students on their toes, since they have to remember rules and think quickly.
Playing with cards also gets students working together and taking turns. There’s a little bit of strategy, too, which makes lessons feel more like play than work.
You can match card games to your students’ level. Beginners? Go simple. Advanced? Make it tougher or require more complex answers.
Honestly, you can use the same deck for almost any group. That’s pretty handy.
Engagement and Motivation in the Classroom
Pretty much everyone loves card games, so you grab attention fast. The random draw means every turn is a surprise, so nobody zones out.
Competition in card games keeps students involved. Play in teams or one-on-one; either way, a little rivalry gets people motivated.
Even quiet students often join in more during games. The rules give everyone a reason to participate, and the group usually cheers each other on.
It’s a good recipe for a positive, lively classroom.
Convenience and Accessibility
Card decks are small, cheap, and easy to carry. Just toss one in your bag (I have two in my bag at all times, just in case) and you’re set for class or even an outdoor lesson.
No printers, no computers, no extra fuss. Just shuffle and go.
Depending on the size of your class and activity you can use one deck for the whole class or a deck for each group. No need to stress about missing materials; cards are everywhere and easy to replace.
Getting Started: Basic Tips for Card Games
Card games in your TEFL class don’t have to be complicated. But a few basics can help things go smoother.
Choosing the Right Deck for the Classroom
A standard 52-card deck works for most games. You can pull out the jokers unless you need them for a specific activity.
Avoid novelty decks with weird symbols or busy designs. Unless you can incorporate them into the activity, they can distract students who may have difficulty focusing.
For younger students, you might want to consider bigger cards or brighter colors. You know, something that makes things easier to see and hold.
Having enough decks helps if you want small groups. Try to get one deck for every 4-6 students so games don’t drag.
Preparing Students for Card Games
Ideally, you won’t need to explain the rules before you start. However, you might need to write out a table on the board of what different cards mean.
Show them how to play a round so everyone gets it. Let each student hold and look at the cards for a minute.
If they aren’t used to using them, modeling a few phrases like “Whose turn is it?” or “Can I have a card, please?” helps keep the game in English.
Activity 1: Vocabulary Speed
Vocabulary Speed is a quick game for reviewing vocabulary and fast thinking, based on the classic card game Speed. All you need is a deck of cards and some categories.
How to Play Vocabulary Speed
Shuffle the deck and deal the cards out. Unlike classic Speed, where players have a 5-card hand and a 15 card, just deal out all of the cards to everyone, minus the two 6-card piles used to create the discard pile.
Depending on the number of players, you might need two decks for this game; more than about 4 and you’ll probably want to break into two groups, each using a deck. Assign a category to each suit, like this:
| Suit | Category |
|---|---|
| Hearts | Food |
| Clubs | Animals |
| Diamonds | Clothing |
| Spades | Sports |
Students look at their hands and, following the rules of Speed, play a card that is either the same number, one number above, or one number below one of the cards at the top of the discard pile, placing it at the top of the appropriate discard pile. As they discard, they say a vocabulary word related to the card they discard.
For example, if someone plays a heart, they name a food.
Play ends when one player runs out of cards or nobody can play a card.
Level Adaptations for Different Learners
For beginners, keep categories simple. Let them work in pairs or use pictures if needed.
Limit the number of answers so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. For intermediates, add rules—maybe they need to make a sentence with each word, or use less common vocabulary. Or limit the number of times a word can be used.
Advanced students? Use tricky categories like “abstract nouns” or “phrasal verbs.” Mix it up to keep things interesting.
Possible Issues
The biggest thing to watch out for here is making sure that students are actually speaking; children, in particular, may get caught up in the game and forget they’re supposed to say a vocabulary word. Also, this game doesn’t really work for beginning students who don’t have much vocabulary.
Activity 2: Go Fish
Go Fish is a fast game for reviewing vocabulary and can be used for most Q&A structures. I mostly use it with “Do you have any…?” and “How many/much… do you have?”, but it can be readily adapted to almost any question and answer pattern.
Gameplay Instructions
Deal the deck evenly to all players. Decide on what each card means; you can specialize the vocab so that all of the words are of a particular group (like foods, for instance), or it can be anything the students choose for a more broad vocabulary review.
On your turn, play exactly as you would Go Fish. For example, if you want to collect 2s, and 2s are apples, you’d ask someone the target language, “Akira (or whoever you’re asking), how many apples do you have?”
The person would respond, “I have 1 (or 2, or 3) apples,” and hand them over. If they don’t have any of that card, they’d say, “Sorry, I don’t have any apples.”
Optional Rules
You can add or ignore rules from classic Go Fish if you want to.
For example, I’ll often drop the rule where if you guess correctly, you can go again. This gives more students a chance to talk. Or I might require that if you don’t have a card, you can’t ask for that card, to keep a clever group from hunting for one specific vocabulary word.
Activity 3: Pronunciation Battles
Depending on where you are teaching English, uttering and hearing certain sounds can be difficult for your students. Japanese people famously have difficulty with l and r; the two sounds are somewhat muddled together in Japanese. They also struggle with b and v; v doesn’t exist in Japanese, so they often approximate it with b, so that “violin” is usually said as “biolin”. And that’s just the beginning for one country.
So, wherever you are, students can really struggle with English pronunciation. But pronunciation practice can actually be fun with a deck of cards. This game focuses on tricky English sounds, using quick rounds to keep everyone involved.
Rules and Setup
Deal each student five cards (or as many as you have time for; you can use the whole deck if you want). Assign each suit to a sound or sound pair you want to practice—maybe b and v, or a and u. I’m using these as the example because these are sounds students here in Japan struggle with differentiating. Write them on the board and link them to suits, like this:
| Suit | Sound Example |
|---|---|
| ♥ | b as in book |
| ♦ | v as in violin |
| ♣ | a as in apple |
| ♠ | u as in umbrella |
Student A draws a card and checks the sound for the suit. They say a word with that sound or read a sample word aloud.
Student B listens and decides if it was pronounced right. If so, Student A keeps the card. If not, Student B takes it. Early on, you will want to be the judge, until you feel your students are doing well by themselves. Then you can step back and referee if there are disagreements.
Keep playing until all cards are gone. Always model the sound before starting, and tweak the target sounds to fit your class.
Tips for Targeting Difficult Sounds
Focus on the sounds your students mix up the most, like v versus b, or e versus i, or whatever your students struggle with. Listen closely when students speak and offer gentle corrections right away.
Hand out word lists or flashcards if someone gets stuck. If you’re in a class with people from multiple countries, switch up pairs often so everyone hears different accents and speaking styles.
Encourage students to repeat after you or a recording. Stick to clear, simple words with the target sound.
You can keep score to make things more exciting, but always praise effort, not just the right answers.
If a sound feels especially tough and nobody is getting it, pause for a round and model it together as a group. Use gestures, mouth shapes, or even quick drawings to help explain.
Tips for Managing No-Prep Card Activities
Using cards in class can get noisy and a bit chaotic. With a few simple steps, you can keep things organized and make sure everyone stays on track.
Classroom Management Strategies
Set flexible rules before handing out the cards. Often times, students will choose to play a game in a way I hadn’t intended, either because they grew up playing the same game differently (or a different but similar game). That’s fine; the keys are that they are using English and having fun. If they do things a little differently than you expected, that’s great; they’re taking control of the class, and you want that to happen.
Give everyone a job. Maybe one student shuffles, another deals, and someone else collects cards at the end. This builds responsibility and keeps things tidy.
If the noise level climbs, try a non-verbal signal like raising your hand to get attention. Set a timer for each activity so everyone knows when to finish.
Stick to simple instructions and check that everyone understands before starting. Move around the room to help or answer questions, especially if you spot confusion.
Adapting Activities for Large or Small Groups
Most language school classes tend to run in smaller numbers (usually a max of 6-10), but if you’re working at an elementary, Jr. High or High School (or college), big classes tend to be the norm, with class sizes of 30-60 not being unusual.
If that happens, break students into smaller teams of four or five. If you don’t have enough cards, let groups take turns or create card stations around the room. Or, because decks of cards are cheap, get a deck for each team.
If you’re working with a huge group, ask students to help manage by keeping score or checking answers. Try to keep everyone moving or involved so nobody feels left out. If space is tight, play at desks or even in the hallway.
Expanding Card Games for Ongoing Learning
Card games are super flexible and can really liven up your English lessons. Changing up the rules or letting students take the lead keeps things fresh and keeps everyone learning.
Encouraging Student-Led Games
When students run card games, they build confidence and teamwork. Hand them a basic game, like “Go Fish,” and, depending on the level, you might not want to explain it. While there is something to be said for explaining the rules of a game in a higher level class because it’s good speaking/listening practice, most card games are simple, and are more easily learned by doing than explaining.
On top of that, if your students are lower level, are they going to understand your explanation? Probably not; why waste your breath? Just get into it quickly.
As I mentioned above, let students invent new rules or add extra tasks. Maybe each card means answering a question or making a sentence. Sharing ideas and leading activities can help shy students speak up more.
Letting students take charge gives them a chance to practice everyday English and makes learning more collaborative, more student-centered, and honestly, more fun for them and less work for you.
Let’s Sum Up
When you bring playing cards into your TEFL lessons, you open up a lot of options. Cards work for all sorts of ages and skill levels.
You don’t need fancy tools or big plans. Just a regular deck can help you teach vocabulary, grammar, or even conversation skills. Yeah, you might need a blackboard or whiteboard for some activities, but a piece of paper and pencil can do the trick just as easily.
Students, especially younger students, usually get more engaged when lessons feel like a game. Drawing cards keeps things fresh and shakes up the routine.
If your learners seem bored, switching to a card game can wake up the class. Card games help a lot with big groups or mixed-level students.
Most card games ask students to think, speak, and listen all at once. That’s a solid way to sneak in language practice while having fun.