One of my students gave me a wonderful idea for an end-of-the-semester activity: an English Olympics. In other words, a group of different English-related activities that use different English-related skills. My students are Low Beginning adults, by the way. They have some English, but it isn �t great at this point.

 

So far, for events, I have thought of

 

Writing: the students get a subject, a verb, a verb tense, and three minutes to write a sentence. They get a point for each word, using the correct tense, each correctly spelled word, two points for a correct negative or question, and five points for a perfect sentence.

 

Spelling: a list of 10 words, a little above their level, as a written test.

 

Pronunciation: (hubby gave me this idea) the class is divided into two halves, not teams. One half acts as judges; the others try to read a sentence and pronounce it as well as possible. I �ll read the sentence out loud first. Then the halves switch and I read a different sentence. The top two of each half, as decided by points from the judges, then get to pronounce a third sentence.

 

Reading: I �ll give the students a list of instructions and ask them to read the instructions all the way through and do the items on the list. The last item, of course, will be "Write your name on the paper, and don �t do the other items on the list." Students will be judged on how quickly they are able to do this.

 

Verb tenses: I �ll probably give them a short worksheet asking them to use the correct verb tense, based on the context of the sentence. At my level, that would only be simple present, present continuous, simple past, and future with "going to."

 

Pentathlon: each of the participants will get 3 points for gold, 2 for silver, and 1 for bronze. The overall highest totals will get special prizes.

 

Attendance: the students with the best attendance in the class by percentage will get awards. My students are adults, and they started on different days.

 

Students will get prizes for individual events as well.

 

I have a three hour class, and I expect maybe 10 students that day. (I have about 15 active now.) I invited another class at the same time and level, but I don �t know if they will participate or not. Do you think these are enough? Do you have suggestions of other activities? What can I improve? My last class is Friday, December 7, so I don �t have a lot of time to put this together. Thank you for any suggestions you have!

 

Have fun!  Keep up the good work.  (I �m going to steal your idea")

 

A listening exercise would also allow me to make a heptathlon instead of a pentathlon, if I include attendance.

I don �t know much about other subjects, I guess, you are more interested in English, so I �ll tell you how it �s done in Ukraine and maybe you �ll like some ideas.

Students can participate starting from grade 8. Each level/grade has different topics/tasks.

The Olympiad has the following stages:

three topics to choose from

time: 1 hour

assessment: points are given for vocabulary (which has to be appropriate for their level), use of connectors, structure, style, content, grammar, extra points for sayings/quotations

one topic (is read/played twice), up to 4 difficult words can be written on the board and explained

tasks:

either True/False +multiple choice

or True/False + open questions (with no answers given)

Time: 40 min

multiple choice

time: 40 min

30 conversational topics to choose from

assessment: points are given for vocabulary, pronunciation, general erudition, grammar, content and understanding of the topic, extra points for asking the oponents questions

There are four teachers in the jury for each grade/level, sometimes one of them is a native speaker (e.g. a PC volunteer)

The students come in fives, they take turns in pulling out three tickets with numbers (they can �t see them), then they look through the topics (in the list of topics) with the numbers they pulled out and choose the one they are more confident about and they have to speak on it right away, after they �ve finished, their oponents ask questions which are relevant to the topic, the jury can also ask questions at this point. While the student is speaking, the jury make notes but they never comment or interrupt. The jury have charts with assessment categories where they fill in the students � names and give points in each category and then count the overall number of points. The chart is then signed by all members of the jury and also by the chairman of the Olympiad level. The jury �s notes are attached as well.

time: depends on the number of participants.

There are three winning places for each grade/level (3 awards for 8th graders, 3 - for 9th graders, 3- for 10th graders, 3- for 11th graders). The winners are chosen according to the overall numbers of points in all skills. There can be several students with the same number of points and they get the same place.

Every three years there are manuals with tasks published for the students to be able to get ready for the Olympiad. There are 100 conversational topics, 50 sample assays, about 30 texts for listening and lots of tests for the use of English with explanations. Therefore the students and their teachers have the necessary materials to prepare for the Olympiad.

Sophia

 

I participated in my state �s Science Olympiad back when I was in high school (mumble, mumble) years ago, and actually took bronze as a sophomore and gold as a senior in the Periodic Table Quiz. That was a bit more on the level that you �re talking about, but I should have thought of an Olympic-style competition long ago.