Humor is a powerful tool in language learning, helping students relax, engage, and retain new concepts. With April Fool’s Day around the corner, now’s the perfect time to spice up your lesson plans with activities that incorporate laughter and creativity. Here are 14 free or low-cost web tools and apps that will get your TESOL students laughing and learning, making grammar, vocabulary, listening, and speaking skills come to life.
1. Talking Tom and Ben News
Platform: iOS, Android, Amazon
This app lets students act as news anchors by voicing either Tom, a talking cat, or Ben, a talking dog. Students can record news segments in pairs, sparking laughter as they practice conversational English through the animated personalities of Tom and Ben. Other characters from Outfit7, like Talking Angela and Talking Ginger, add variety and ensure students are actively speaking and interacting.
Teaching Tip: Have students report on funny current events or make up a silly news story to share with the class.
2. Quizizz
Platform: Web, iOS, Android
Quizizz transforms quizzes into a game-show-style experience, complete with memes and timed responses. Teachers can customize quizzes or choose from existing ones, while the app provides fun, instant feedback after each question.
Teaching Tip: Add humorous memes related to each question to keep students engaged and laughing while they learn vocabulary or review grammar concepts.
3. MouthOff
Platform: iOS, Android
MouthOff brings the fun by letting students choose a mouth, hold the phone up to their face, and watch as the mouth syncs with their words. It’s a funny way for students to practice pronunciation and intonation.
Teaching Tip: Use MouthOff for pronunciation practice, and encourage students to tell a joke or read a tongue-twister to practice fluency with their animated mouths.
4. Bitstrips
Platform: iOS, Android, Kindle
With Bitstrips, students can create comics featuring avatars that look like themselves or their friends. Students can create dialogues, design scenarios, and customize backgrounds, making language practice visually engaging and laugh-out-loud funny.
Teaching Tip: Have students create short comics that illustrate a recent grammar lesson, like a story using past tense verbs or a comic illustrating common idioms.
5. TinyTap
Platform: iOS, Android, Desktop
TinyTap lets students create interactive games and presentations complete with sound effects, images, and text. It’s easy to use, and the possibilities for humor are endless.
Teaching Tip: Encourage students to create a “fun fact quiz” about each other, integrating funny questions that require language skills to answer.
6. Voki
Platform: Web
Voki allows students to create their own animated talking characters. They can record messages or type text for the character to say, giving students a safe and entertaining way to practice speaking.
Teaching Tip: Assign students to create Vokis introducing themselves or their favorite hobbies, encouraging them to use humor and creativity to make their introductions memorable.
7. Blabberize
Platform: Web
Blabberize allows students to upload any image, add a digital mouth, and make the image “speak.” Students can use drawings, photos, or downloaded images to create short skits or conversations.
Teaching Tip: Ask students to create a “blabber” explaining a funny situation or telling a joke, helping them practice descriptive language.
8. YakIt Kids and Chatterpix Kids
Platform: iOS
These apps allow students to upload images, add a digital mouth, and record audio to make the images “talk.” It’s an easy way to turn photos into humorous language practice tools.
Teaching Tip: Have students bring in a funny picture and create a short story around it. This works well for practicing narrative skills, adjectives, and descriptive vocabulary.
9. Plotagon
Platform: Web, iOS, Android
Plotagon lets students create animated videos featuring their own custom avatars. They can script dialogues, add scenes, and bring stories to life in a fully animated format.
Teaching Tip: Ask students to write and animate a dialogue practicing a specific set of vocabulary or grammar rules, then share their videos with the class.
10. Sock Puppets
Platform: iOS
With Sock Puppets, students can create short movies featuring animated sock puppet characters. The app lets them voice the characters and add backgrounds and props, creating fun storylines in English.
Teaching Tip: Use Sock Puppets for group work, where students create and perform a short skit practicing new vocabulary or idioms.
11. Puppet Pals and Toontastic
Platform: iOS
These apps allow students to create animated stories with various characters and settings. Students can record voices, animate characters, and tell stories, which is perfect for practicing storytelling skills.
Teaching Tip: Assign each group a different genre (e.g., comedy, drama, mystery) and have them create a short story in that style, helping them use creative language and explore genre-specific vocabulary.
12. Tellagami
Platform: iOS
Tellagami allows students to create and customize an animated “gami” that can speak with their own voice. Students can use it to record speeches, practice pronunciation, or narrate stories.
Teaching Tip: Encourage students to introduce themselves or narrate a funny story about an imaginary character they create with Tellagami, practicing pronunciation and speaking fluency.
13. Mad Libs App
Platform: iOS, Android
Mad Libs brings classic fill-in-the-blank fun to mobile devices, where students choose words to create wacky, unpredictable stories. It’s great for practicing parts of speech in a playful way.
Teaching Tip: Use Mad Libs as a warm-up activity, where students collaborate to create a story, reviewing parts of speech while creating hilariously unexpected narratives.
14. Kahoot! Jumble
Platform: Web, iOS, Android
Kahoot! Jumble mixes up sentence parts that students have to arrange in the correct order. It’s a great way to turn sentence construction into a fast-paced, interactive challenge, and students love the competition.
Teaching Tip: Create humorous sentences with scrambled words, allowing students to work in pairs to unscramble and share their funny sentences.
Why Use Humor in Language Learning?
Humor reduces stress, makes language memorable, and turns learning into an enjoyable experience. When students laugh, they’re more engaged, motivated, and open to speaking in front of others. By using these web tools and apps, TESOL teachers can introduce humor in ways that allow students to learn in a comfortable, encouraging environment. Try these resources in your classroom, and watch as your students laugh, learn, and improve their language skills—all while having a great time!
April Fool’s day is coming up! Spice up a lesson plan, activity or project with humor. Humor is a great way to ease the anxiety of learning a new language and can make learning grammar or vocabulary fun. Below are our some free web tools and apps your students will enjoy using to enhance their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. For ideas on how to effectively use these tools for learning, check out webinar recordings, Engage Learners with Humor and Teach English with Jokes.
