Getting Started with Playguistics
A Complete Guide for New Users
Introduction: What You're About to Discover
Welcome to Playguistics. You’re about to access over 100 speaking activities designed to help your ESL students communicate with confidence and reach CEFR A2 competence—the level where learners can handle everyday conversations, ask for help, and express simple opinions. This guide will show you how to navigate the product, understand what makes these activities different, and start using them in your classroom on day one.
If you’ve ever felt frustrated watching students sit passively through grammar exercises, only to freeze when asked a real question, this product exists to solve that problem. The activities here are built on a simple principle: students learn to speak by actually speaking, in structured but fun contexts where meaning matters more than perfection.
Part 1: Understanding the Philosophy Behind Playguistics
Why These Activities Work Differently
Most ESL materials ask students to practice grammar in isolated sentences: “Complete the sentence: I ___ (go) to school every day.” Students might fill in the blank perfectly but still can’t order a coffee in English.
Playguistics takes a different approach. Every activity puts students in a realistic communication scenario where they must use language to accomplish something real—even if that “reality” is just a game. When students are trying to figure out what their partner is thinking, or negotiating who gets to sit where, or explaining why a drawing doesn’t match the description they were given, they’re using English as a tool to communicate, not as a subject to study.
This approach—called Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) in educational circles—has decades of research showing it produces better speaking outcomes than traditional grammar-focused instruction. Your students will leave your classroom actually able to use English, not just talk about how to use it.
What CEFR A2 Means
You’ll see “CEFR A2” mentioned throughout the instructions for various activities in Playguistics’ learning resource toolbox. This is a standardized framework used worldwide to describe language competence. CEFR A2 is the pre-intermediate language level—the point where learners can:
- Handle simple, everyday conversations (greetings, basic questions)
- Ask for and provide personal information
- Describe their family, interests, and immediate surroundings in simple terms
- Understand the main points in simple, clearly spoken messages
- Make basic requests and apologize
- Use present and past tenses in simple ways
This is the sweet spot. It’s not beginner (A1), where students can barely introduce themselves. It’s not intermediate (B1), where they can discuss abstract ideas. A2 is functional—students can genuinely communicate in real situations. And importantly, A2 is achievable for most students in a standard classroom setting if they’re given the right activities and time to practice.
Each activity in Playguistics is designed to build toward this level, scaffolding vocabulary, grammar, and confidence in layers.
Part 2: Navigating Your Playguistics Membership
Finding Activities: Three Ways to Search
When you log in, you’ll see four main ways to find what you need:
- View by Topic: There are 45 different learning topic areas listed on the Teaching Topics page. Click on any topic to see all fo the learning activities that either focus on or touch on that topic.
- View by Activity Type: Do you want something that involves drawing? Role-playing? Games? Deduction puzzles? This section helps you find activities by format, which is useful if you want variety or if you’re looking for something that works with your specific group of learners. Just go to the Activities drop-down in the menu at the top of this page to see all activity types.
- View by Vocabulary Content: Browse through any of our vocabulary lists to find any activity that uses the Core Vocabulary Words, the Context-Taught Words or Reading/Pronunciation Practice Words you’d like your students to learn with next.
What You'll Find for Each Activity
Every activity comes with the same documentation:
- Grammar & Vocabulary Targets: The specific language points students will practice (e.g., “Present continuous tense, classroom vocabulary”).
- Materials: What you need to print or prepare. Most activities require only the provided printable materials; no special equipment.
- Detailed Instructions:
- How to introduce the activity to students
- How students should be organized (often in pairs or small groups)
- How to manage the activity in the classroom