Cat-Related Vocabulary in the ESL Classroom

For some fun with idiomatic words and phrases in your ESL classroom, spend a lesson learning about cats. They're cute and fuzzy, or annoying (depending on your view), and they are interspersed throughout the English language. We make reference to them more than we might expect.

If your class is ready for a break from grammar and regular vocabulary lists, learning some cat-related words and phrases can pick them up again and get them ready for the next round of past-tense verb structures you have waiting for next week.

Here are a few examples that could be introduced in an intermediate to advanced classroom of English as a Second Language students:

When the cat's away, the mice will play.

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Fight like cats and dogs

Like herding cats

Like a cat on a hot tin roof

Raining cats and dogs

Cat's meow

Let the cat out of the bag

Cat got your tongue?

Catty

Catwalk

Catnap

Alley cat

An idea to teach these words and phrases comes from the Teach English in Asia website, although this particular version is adapted for this lesson.

One user recommends a game called "running dictation," where students are split up into small groups. Each group gets a piece of paper with a sentence using the new vocabulary on it that is taped to the chalkboard, sentence-side down. The rest of the group does not see the piece of paper. The leader of the group runs to the board and tries to memorize the sentence. The leader then returns to the group and dictates what is remembered of the sentence to the group. The group members then try to write down the original sentence based on the dictation from the team leader. The first group to correctly write down its sentence wins.

Since the class would be learning cat-related words and phrases in this particular lesson, have the groups then spend some time trying to figure out the meaning of the word or phrase based on the sentence that they were given. Make sure that groups have the right sentence to work from and that they are not working from their possibly incorrect version they wrote down from the team leader's dictation. The team that gets the meaning of the word of phrase right first could then receive extra points.

This activity received good reviews in its original version on the Teach English in Asia website. It is good for younger as well as older, adult students. The adults reportedly were really getting into the whole deal as much as children would!

So, experiment with different words and phrases that you want your class to learn, and have some fun by using the cat-related vocabulary in a lesson sometime. This activity could be adapted to suit nearly any lesson, and it's great for reading, writing, listening, and speaking as well. It can be used to reinforce grammatical structures, too.