Reading or listening to a short article or story is a common English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom activity. Following the reading or listening portion of the lesson, teachers often employ a series of exercises to assess the student's comprehension of the material. Using ESL summarizing games, in addition to or rather than exercises, offers students an opportunity to have fun while learning and boosts their enthusiasm for learning English.

Sentence Chains
A sentence chain is an ESL summarizing game for intermediate or advanced students and requires no preparation on the teacher's part. Not only does it test students' comprehension of the given material, it also presents them with an opportunity to practice sentence writing. Divide your class into groups of four to six students, depending on the number of pupils. Disperse your best ESL students throughout the groups. This ESL summarizing game requires one piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser. After reading the material, the students will write a summary as a group. The first student writes a sentence and then passes the paper to the next student and so on until everyone in the group has an opportunity to write a sentence. Once completed, one student brings the paper up to the teacher for corrections. The teacher then circles the mistakes and the students return to their desks to rewrite the sentences correctly. The first group with a grammatically correct summary is the winner.

Word Search
Word Search is an appropriate ESL summarizing game for advanced beginners and requires approximately 30 minutes preparation from the teacher. This activity is ideal for students learning sentence structure. Prepare by writing several very simple summaries for the given material. Then, transcribe all the words used in your summary, in pairs, randomly on a blank piece of copy paper and make copies for the class. For example: "John went," "into the," "candy store." After reading the story or article with the class, divide students into groups of two or more, depending on class size, and hand out the copies. Ask students to construct sentences using the word pairs on the page. Once completed, circle the mistakes and ask the students to rewrite the summaries until they are correct. The first team with a grammatically correct summary is the winner.

Chronological Order
Chronological Order offers a good exercise for intermediate and advanced beginner ESL students 12 years and older. Prepare by writing a summary of the given material. Then cut and paste your sentences in random order using your word processing program. Place a blank at the beginning of each sentence. Students in groups of four to six place the sentences in chronological order by writing a number in the blank. The first group with the correct numbered sequence is the winner.