Five-Minute Activities by Penny Ur & Andrew Wright

Five-minute Activities contains over 130 ideas for the foreign language classroom in its 100 pages. I read this book from cover to cover, and was pleased to be able to make many notes for my future lessons. Some of the activities are actually quite common, and perhaps most teachers would be aware of them, but there were many good ones that I'd never come across, including a few gems. Some are literally five-minute fillers, while others are worthy of spending maybe a whole lesson on. If I had to make a tentative criticism, it'd be that many of the suggestions have students generating language that would never be heard beyond the walls of an EFL classroom. For example, "A pencil is thinner than an elephant." I have mixed feelings about whether this is such a bad thing or not. On the one hand, students can practice structurally correct forms of language and learn whilst having fun. On the other hand, Five-minute Activities doesn't really present them with many opportunities to practise for situations in the real world, which may, of course, not be as fun. Also, I felt that there was a bias for activities that focused on self-disclosure, or competing to be the best in the class. Great, perhaps, for European or South American students of English, but not quite so good for students at my secondary school here in Japan. Overall, I'm pleased to have this book for reference, and I'd recommend it to most of my colleagues, even if some of the suggestions reminded me of what it used to be like as a pupil at a British elementary school.

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