This is a contributed post by educator Darlene Fahrenkrug.

Quizlet is an excellent tool for practicing vocabulary, but it can also be used to create engaging and meaningful collaborative activities. Quizlet’s intuitive features streamline the process of creating these types of activities, saving me effort and time.

While the website and apps’ study modes are engaging and accessible, I find them most helpful for individual practice. To create group activities for speaking, reading, listening, writing, grammar, content, or vocabulary practice at any level, I like to use Quizlet’s print feature (detailed tutorial here).

Print small flashcards.png

Anything typed into a Quizlet study set can be printed in 5 different formats and on both sides of the paper. The Quizlet platform takes the guesswork out of setting up margins, drawing borders, and marking cut lines as well as automatically adjusting the font. Large cards have room for a question or statement with a picture (5 rows to a page), and the small cards have enough room for a word, phrase or picture (10 rows to a page). Sets are easy to share with colleagues, copy, and edit through the Quizlet website. To reuse printed cards, I store them in envelopes labeled by level/unit.

Here are a few examples of how I format Quizlet sets to be printed and used for collaborative activities in my classroom.

Speaking practice

As speaking practice, you can create Quizlet cards for line dialogues, conversation questions, interviews, role-plays, Would You Rather, or Find Someone Who activities.

Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 1.08.06 PM.pngFigure 1: Students ask and answer Find Someone Who questions to find their partner for the next activity. Sample set and detailed instructions here.

Reading skills

To practice reading skills with Quizlet, create cards for Find Your Partner, prediction (pictures or text), match reading elements, or class chat.

Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 1.11.30 PM.pngFigure 2: Students in table groups predict and discuss what the different elements of an upcoming story are. They practice asking and answering questions, giving opinions, and supporting their opinions. Sample set here.

Listening practice

If listening practice is the objective, give students Quizlet cards to practice song reconstruction, matching main ideas with details, or prediction cards.

Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 1.17.55 PM.pngFigure 3: Students predict the order of the lyrics and check their answers by listening to the song. Later, they will identify the imperatives and talk about the main idea and details of the song. Sample set here.

Writing skills

Students often find it hard to get started writing. As a pre-write activity, engage them with Quizlet cards such as Create an Ending, content practice, sentence Bingo, or prompt cards.

Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 1.21.24 PM.pngFigure 4: Students in table groups negotiate the best answers for the table and report back to the class. Individually, they choose one question and write about their personal answer using target language. Sample set here.

Language activities

Content or target language activities are simple and fast to create with Quizlet. Try using study sets to make a pronunciation sort, game board cards, phrasal verbs practice, roll and write, or grammar activities.

Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 1.23.15 PM.pngFigure 5: After practicing these cards to learn the vocabulary, students use the definitions to draw or act out for their partners to guess. Then, students use them as cards on a game board to create sentences. Finally, students draw cards to use in writing. Sample set here.

Darlene Fahrenkrug (CELTA) is an Adult ESL and Digital Literacy instructor for Arlington Education and Employment Program (REEP). She is pursuing an M.A. in Linguistics from George Mason University. Connect with her on LinkedIn.