Updated version of this post with more worksheets and explanation here.

In my endless quest to get students using higher level functional language, I invented this simple but popular game.

Students match up beginnings and ends of useful phrases, then add extra words to the middle to check and expand on their answers. After checking with the answer key and testing each other in pairs, those same pieces of paper can then be used in a communicative game in which they get points for using the words written on them during a discussion or other communicative task.

It takes some collecting of phrases to make a new version of this game (I failed with telephoning and emailing phrases), but have come up with four popular and hopefully useful versions so far:

Sharing personal experiences longer phrases card games

Longer advice phrases card games

Longer opinions phrases card games

Longer academic phrases card games

Previous TEFLtastic classics here, more functional language worksheets here, and more Academic English worksheets here.