What the Hell Does This Have to Do with ESL?
I’d even print out the cards and cut them up (black & white of course) and give them to the students. You could do cool Tarot readings, and get students to actually create a dialogue.
Explain a bit about how Tarot works. I’d recommend doing the 3 card draw, which just consists of taking three cards from anywhere in the deck. The first card is your past, or what has happened to you. The second card is the present, or what is happening to you now. The third card is the future, or what is going to or may happen to you.
Students will already start to get an idea of this activity after that, and then you should model it. It doesn’t really matter if you know that much about Tarot cards or not, and it’ll probably be more fun if you don’t. Here’s a simple example that I’ve used in the past:
That’s an actual example that I used on the spot when I drew three random cards the first time I did this activity. I really had no idea what I wanted this activity to be, just that it would make a great activity if I ever figured that out. As you can see, it was pretty much all a past-tense story, and I didn’t talk about the present or future. That’s fine; all you want to do is get the kids talking, using their imaginations, and having fun.
This is really a short example of what you can do in class, and I’ve got a chapter on it in my book English Rocks!
If you’d like to try out Tarot in your ESL class, check out the Tarot ESL PowerPoint, and make sure to give my book on Amazon a look.
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