Enriching Education - The Language Teaching Toolkit: 154 activities for getting languages to stick

Mastering a new language can take up to 700 hours of guided learning, making it difficult to keep students motivated, engaged and consistently progressing.¹ Teachers must also ensure students develop all four key language skills - reading, writing, speaking and listening. So, when learning a new language requires such dedication, and teaching it demands meticulous care and planning, every minute of lesson time counts.


Today’s language classrooms are more diverse than ever, bringing together learners from different ages, abilities and cultural backgrounds, all of whom require adaptable, student-centred approaches.² This requires careful planning from language teachers to make activities worthwhile and tailored to each student’s needs.
For time-pressed teachers, designing varied, inclusive and effective activities can be a demanding task. Research shows that 40% of teachers in the UK work unpaid overtime – which is higher than any other profession.³ As Dr Andy Goldhawk explains, “Finding ideas and inspiration for learning activities can be very time-consuming, which is a problem for our time-poor teachers. I wanted to put together a repository of learning activities in one place for language teachers, to avoid them having to sink hours into searching the internet and numerous other books.”
Andy has drawn on both his knowledge as a lecturer in Education and his 15 years’ experience as an ESOL teacher to write The Language Teaching Toolkit. This practical resource brings together more than 150 dynamic language learning activities that busy teachers can easily embed into their lesson plans. It covers all key language skills and includes guidance on the timing and level of each activity, making it easy for teachers to vary their pedagogical approach and teach in a way that is targeted towards their students’ needs.

Crucially, the activities are enjoyable. “Activities that are fun and engaging aid student motivation, retention, and a positive attitude towards language acquisition,” Andy notes. “When activities are enjoyable, students tend to participate more actively and process information more deeply.”

Together, these activities allow language teachers to reclaim endless planning hours and set their students up for success, while making language teaching more sustainable, creative and rewarding.


Ideal for trainees and early career language teachers, as well as more experienced language teachers.

Dr Andy Goldhawk teaches on various postgraduate programmes at the University of the West of England, Bristol, including the MA in Education Leadership (which he co-leads), the PG Cert (teaching and learning in Higher Education), and the Doctorate in Education. He was previously an adult ESOL lecturer for fifteen years. During that period, he was also programme lead and a teaching and learning coach.

¹ Ben Knight, ‘How long does it take to learn a language?’, World of Better Learning, Cambridge University,2018. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2018/10/11/how-long-learn-language/.

² 'English as an Additional Language (EAL) and Educational Achievement in England’, The Bell Foundation, 2025. Available at: https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/our-work/with-schools/research/eal-and-educational-achievement-in-england-an-analysis-of-publicly-available-data/.

³ ‘UK workers put in £26 billion worth of unpaid overtime during the last year’, Trades Union Congress, 2024. Available at: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-workers-put-26-billion-worth-unpaid-overtime-during-last-year-tuc-analysis.