Bingo! Playing a Game With The Times to Improve English Language Skills
By KATHERINE SCHULTEN AND DINAH MACK
Overview | How can students improve English language skills by reading The New York Times? In this lesson, students first compile lists of their own personal “grammar, punctuation, spelling and usage demons,” then play a bingo game to find examples of correct usage in The New York Times; finally, they track particular words, marks of punctuation or elements of grammar or usage through a week’s worth of The Times to view examples.
Materials | Computers with Internet access and/or several print copies of any day’s New York Times (enough so that each student, or pair of students, has access to a section.)
Warm-up | Put the two sentences “Let’s eat, Grandma” and “Let’s eat Grandma” on the board and ask students what each sentence means. Then ask why a Facebook group that uses these two sentences in its title is subtitled “Punctuation Saves Lives.” (If time permits, you might even take a moment to challenge students to write their own pairs of nearly identical sentences in which one punctuation mark completely changes the meaning.)
Next, ask students to work with a partner to think of three grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, style or usage errors they tend to make regularly. You might have them first scan some of their own work to identify errors;