Pelmanism (also called “the memory game” or “pairs”) is the classic TEFL card game in which students try to find matching pairs of cards from the pack spread face down across the table, just as you can try to find the seven of clubs and seven of spades in the original card game.
This variation is much easier to set up and also produces much better language. Students are given a pack of cards which are in no way designed to have pairs, and must try to find any link between the cards they turn over in order to be able to keep them, e.g. that “egg” and “napkin” are both white or that “salt shaker” and “democracy” are in most countries in the world nowadays. They can’t use the same way of linking the cards more than once per game.
As well as practicing or revising a set of vocabulary in this way, you can also add a language point that must be used to explain the link such as cause and effect, or similarities and differences.
Video describing the game here (my first vid – it shows!)
The worksheet in the video is here:
and more versions of random pelmanism are here:
Sports and exercise random pelmanism comparing practice – NEW
Jobs vocabulary random pelmanism
Comparing places Comparatives random pelmanism card game
Abilities of animals can/ can’t games (including random pelmanism) – LINK UPDATED
Phrasal verbs random pelmanism
Phonics personalised yes/ no questions random pelmanism
Comparing animals random pelmanism
Environmental collocations first conditional pelmanism
Do you like animals personalised random pelmanism card game
Comparing places random pelmanism (comparatives with places names and adjectives, including nationalities)
Academic vocabulary random pelmanism
Third conditional vocabulary revision random pelmanism game
Classroom language random pelmanism
20 more classic (or new classic) TEFL card games in a new article of mine on the topic here and more TEFLtastic classics here. Should anyone want to make or have already made similar videos demonstrating any of those games, I will be happy to link to them from here, because unlike what it says in the vid, I doubt I’ll ever get round to doing the rest…
Updated 28 May 2025
TEFLtastic 
Use for Past Continuous described here:
https://www.tefl.net/elt/ideas/grammar/past-continuous-activities/
and post on pelmanism more generally here:
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This is really easy to adapt for online classes – simply change the text in the cards to white, then get students to change it to black every time they choose a card (in an editable format such as Word, as it won’t work with a PDF). If you want to score, they can then change it to a different colour if they match successfully (e.g. red for one player and blue for the other).
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