Which tool?
You can use a word processor to create matching activities but there are also some tailor-made authoring tools for this purpose.
Use PowerPoint to create learning activities. Showing connections between linguistic items is a useful way of promoting language learning.
This activity provides a dynamic presentation, which can be used to reinforce either a grammatical structure or items of vocabulary. For example, you can achieve this by asking learners to reflect on or discuss the relationship between words and their opposites or between verbs and endings.
Present mismatched pairs of vocabulary items or examples, illustrating the grammatical point. Then, either under teacher or trainer control or by involving learners, especially if an interactive whiteboard is available, show arrows 'flying in' to match up the correct pairs.
MALTED provides several matching templates, but you can also use the Association template, which allows learners to drag arrows to match up items, which need not be purely textual.
If you have TaskMagic, it also offers a range of matching activities.
With all matching activities, if the number to be matched is the same on each side, then the final match becomes meaningless! Learners also need to receive feedback on why their choice was a good one or not.
You can find practical suggestions on using these techniques in the following activities on the Learner activities toolkit CD-ROM:
- Categorisation
- Divided opinions
- Odd one out; and
- Sure, unsure or no idea.