Not my greatest piece of writing, but my latest column for the Korea Herald is out. When I started writing this I searched my archives and was surprised to note that I had not previously written about icebreakers. For the record the article has been slightly re-ordered by my editor.

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Icebreakers are one of the staples of a teacher’s repertoire. Icebreakers get over this barrier but the primary purpose for myself in Korea is to get as many people talking to as many other people as possible in order to break down inhibitions and set the tone for a communicative classroom and build a good classroom atmosphere.

Having each student stand up one-by-one and give a brief introduction of themselves, perhaps for about 30-60 seconds, is a common ice breaker among inexperienced teachers. I was guilty of this in the past as well. This is, however, not a particularly good way to do introductions or icebreakers. It’s boring for both the learner and the teacher and results in very little production of language by learners.

In terms of selecting a good icebreaker, an important factor is that in many universities many students may already be somewhat familiar with each other due to the fact that they have gone through orientation together, or have attended other classes together. This familiarity issue is also present in middle and high school classes since most students advance together through the grades.

Thus, the key is to focus on activities that are fun, engaging, and in some way focus on a language point that the learners need to improve. That is, all activities should have value on a number of levels; they should be beneficial to various branches of learning.

For example, a simple question and answer activity between small groups of students followed by a summarative report back to the larger group can work. In order to add some language focus the teacher could have a simple grammar review focusing on question forms. Alternatively, the focus could be on politeness, building awareness of the different kinds of questions that one may ask in English compared to Korean.

Both of the above examples could be further enhanced by having students in groups brainstorm, beforehand, questions to ask each other. Following that, the teacher could put some of the questions on the board. Students would then ask questions to each other and record their answers in order to report to a different student. After a short time learners would be asked to switch partners and introduce their prior partner.

In order to make any question and answer activity work well with students who are somewhat familiar with each other, another good idea would be to narrow the field of questions. Instead of the typical “What’s your name? Where do you live? Do you have any brothers or sisters?” get learners talking about their most embarrassing moment, scariest event, or strangest dream.

The icebreakers detailed above all have a brief grammar focus, a brainstorming session, a pair work component, group work, as well as whole-class work. Additionally, they utilize all four language subskills, have kinesthetic aspects, and focus changes that keep students’ attention on task.

Most importantly it gets students talking to each other and prepares students for further communicative practice in the classroom.

If you have a favorite ice-breaker or first day activity, please share it on Sean’s blog in the comments section.