Importance of incorporating warm ups when teaching English

It is not so difficult to understand what the words "warm up" or "warming" mean because it is a common word for atletes and we can also find these words mean in the teaching context. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, what word "warm up" means "to engage or practice before enteringto a game or a contest" or "to engage in preliminary exercise"

The incorporation of warm ups activities do not have the necessary attention and it should because we (including myself sometimes) focus more on grammar explanations and other kinds of activities that may not be interesting or meaningful for students. A student may get into the class but he or she could feel more connected to his/her inner world rather than being in the learning context. In this point, warm ups are very important links that engage students to the class since the moment they arrive there and they also offer more to the class than just enjoying an activity.

Warm ups are the beginning part of the lesson plans and they should be attractive according to the students' proficiency level as they do not have to be confusing or difficult for the learners to develop the tasks. On the other hand, we need to focus more physical activities and less on the non-communicative ones. I have always thought that our classrooms must be noisy in the sense of reaching learning objectives.

Here, there is an example of a warm up called "Broken phone" or "Chinesse whispers". This video was recorded from a class at Universidad Católica de El Salvador in the English extension classes. The teacher is making a review of the simple past tense. Take a look at it ...

     

As we can see from the video, the level of attention in the students increases as all of them are participating and at the same time, they are using a grammar pattern they have previously studied. Besides all the fun and laugh they have at the moment of developing the activity, we can see that they are practicing the target language with a purpose.

As a conclusion, incorporating a warm up in the class is really important as it comes at the beginning of the lesson and at the same time, prepares the atmosphere and raises students' expectations to the class. At the same time, having warm ups bring a more positive attitude in students and make the learning process more interactive.