Findings and discussion
Research question 1: the favoured types of activities and the reasons for preferring these activities
The results showing the two preferred activity types for the weeks following the second intervention are presented in Table 2
Although students were given 12 alternatives, they asked for particular activities during the term; namely, guessing, vocabulary, jigsaw and role-play. Guessing activities were the most popular. In this type of activity, students try to find out something that another student knows. As highlighted by Klippel (1984), guessing activities are popular among language learners because they allow for language practice and provide an entertaining and engaging classroom environment. In the interventions, guessing and vocabulary activities were combined because vocabulary was another popular activity. In these activities, students were asked to define and guess words in various situations.