EFL Game: Last Letter, First letter

Last fall I posted about some of the activities that I do at the end of my classes when everything else has been wrapped up yet we have a few minutes left before the bell rings.

For some reason, however, I forgot to mention the "last letter, first letter" game.  It's one of my favorite short activities, in part because it can start/stop almost instantly.

I say, "Ok, first letter, last letter.  Today we are doing animals.  My animal is elephant."

"Elephant" ends with a "t", so the first student has to say an animal that begins with the letter "t".

I've taught most classes that a popular food in Korea, 참치, means "tuna" in English, so that often pops up.

"Tuna" ends with "a", so the next student might say "anaconda".

And so on.

Usually we do either food or animals, but I have branched out into sports, verbs, and countries.

Doing countries can be a bit tricky, however, as I was reminded that a lot of countries end with the letter "a", so it's easy to get wrapped up in a vicious cycle: America, Afganistan, Nambia, Algeria, Argentina . . .

It's a good activity for listening, thinking about country names in English, and responding (hopefully quickly--there's peer pressure involved).