Error correction games1. Grammar auctionStudents try to outbid other teams for correct sentences from the list you have given them while not buying incorrect sentences (but perhaps still bidding for them at the beginning to make other teams think they are correct). The team that has “bought” the most correct sentences and least wrong sentences at the end of the game is the winner. There is a whole article on 15 Variations on Grammar Auctions available at:

2. Grammar rouletteThis game is included in the article mentioned above but is actually more like a totally different game. From the amount of imaginary money you have given each team they can bet as much as they like on whether a sentence is right or wrong. When the answer is revealed, they get back double the money they bet if they were right and lose the money they bet if they were wrong. The team with most money at the end of the game is the winner, or you can stop when one team has lost all their cash.

3. Pairwork errors dictationStudents are given Student A and Student B worksheets that have the same sentences but with errors added to one of the versions each time, e.g. Student A has the correct version of sentence 1 and Student B has the version with an error, then in sentence 2 it is the other way round, etc. Reading their sentences out to each other, the students have to work together to identify which sentence is right and correct the wrong version. You can give them a chance to check their answers and try again by telling them how many errors there were on the Student A sheet and how many there were on the Student B sheet. They can’t look at each other’s worksheets until you let them check their answers at the very end.

4. Pairwork all kinds of errors dictationIn this variation on Pairwork Errors Dictation above, students have to work together to work out if both their version are wrong, both are right or only one is wrong. It is best to limit their task to just this and to leave actually correcting the mistakes until you go through the answers as a class.

5. “Different” or just different?In this easier variation on Pairwork All Kinds of Errors Dictation above, students are given two different ways of saying the same thing and have to work out if one is wrong (e.g. “I have been here a few times before” and “I have gone here a few times before” x) or if both are correct (e.g. “I put the trash in the trash can” and “I put the rubbish in the bin”). When they finish, go through the answers and discuss what the differences between the two sentences are when they are both correct, e.g. American English and British English, formal and informal, or spoken and written English.

6. Pairwork put your errors togetherIn this variation on the games above, the students have different sentences but with the same kind of errors, e.g. two sentences where “on” has been used as a preposition of time where it should have been “at”. They read their sentences out to each other, identify their shared errors and correct both of their sentences on their worksheets.

7. Pairwork match the errors dictation

In this variation, one student has wrong versions of all the sentences and the other students just has the words that should be put in instead of the wrong ones there at the moment, e.g. Student A has the sentence “The boat was made by wood” and Student B has the word “from”. As Student B’s words are mixed up, the students need to work together (without showing their worksheets to each other) to find which words match which sentences and where they should go. It is also possible to do a much easier version where the words aren’t mixed up but they still need to work together to decide which word in the sentence each word should replace.

8. Video grammar correctionGive students some true and some false sentences about things that happen in a video. The false sentences should be ones based on common confusions, such as “He had put on the kettle when the man came in” (instead of “He put the kettle on when the man came in” or “He was putting the kettle on when the man came in” as happens in the video) or things based on false friends such as “She was embarrassed” (rather than “She was pregnant” as in the video, a common confusion for Spanish speakers). Students watch the video and shout out anything they think they see happen that is written on the worksheet. Give one point if that is exactly what happened (i.e. it was a correct sentence) and take away one point if what happened was different in some way (i.e. they fell into a trap you set them). This works best with a video where there is little dialogue such as Mr Bean, Pingu or Wallace and Gromit.

9. The add errors challengeStudents are given or choose sentences without any errors and change them so that they are incorrect, e.g. changing the correct sentence “I have been here for three months” so that the preposition is “since”.  They then pass these to another team or read them out, and the other students try to spot and correct the errors. Make sure you check that they are making the original sentences incorrect when they change them, rather than just making a different correct sentence. This game works especially well for exam tasks including error correction, e.g. the tasks in FCE and CAE Use of English, and for giving them model answers to writing tasks in Academic English etc classes.

10. Pick your error!Students pick if they want to try and correct a grammar mistake, vocabulary mistake, spelling mistake, punctuation mistake, pronunciation mistake etc, and then try to correct an error in that category from a worksheet, pack of cards, the textbook or workbook, or sentences made up by the other students.

11. Pick your tricky error!This is similar to Pick Your Error! above. Students decide if they want to try to correct a very easy mistake for one point, a slightly more difficult error for two points, etc up to 5 or 10 points. The errors they correct can be classified by the teacher or classified by different teams in an earlier stage of the game. The wrong sentences can also be made up by one team (similar to The Add Errors Challenge above), classified by another team, and used for this game by a third. This can be combined with Pick Your Error! above by allowing the student or team to choose both the difficulty of the error and the kind of error that they want to try and correct.

12. Land on that error (The error correction board game)This is similar to the two game ideas above, but students move around a board and try to

correct an error of the type written on the square they land on, e.g. “Correct a pronunciation error from your teacher/ the tape/ the worksheet/ your partner”

13. Error MastermindThis is similar to the 1980s board game Mastermind, where people try to guess which four colours in which order their partner has put behind the barrier whilst only being told how many they have guessed correctly each time. In this error correction version, students are shown a short text or dialogue with 5 errors in it and try to correct the whole thing in their team. The first team reads out their corrected version, and the teacher then tells the class how many errors are left in that sentence after the team had corrected it (e.g. “There are now four errors”- there could even be more than the original 5 errors if the team has taken something correct and changed it to make it wrong!) The other teams then need to guess which things the previous team changed were actual corrections and which weren’t, and then try to make a better attempt at correcting the whole thing. Continue around the class until the teacher finally says “There are now no errors”.

14. Stop me when I make a mistakeThe teacher reads out a text or dialogue and students compete to be the first person to shout out “Error!” after the teacher says something wrong. They don’t need to be able to identify the error or correct it (these can be offered later for additional points), but they lose points if they shout out before the teacher says anything wrong. Students can then write similar dialogues or add errors to a dialogue they are given and read them out for the whole class to shout out in the same way to.