Happy Friday everyone! Today we are checking in with a fun, easy, conversation activity designed to get your students talking.
When learning a new language, conversation is the name of the game. Practicing natural conversations is one of the most important components in an ESL class.
Conversation activities can help:
- boost student confidence through practice with other learners they can relate to
- reduce teacher talk time and give instructors the opportunity to gauge and monitor their students progress
- give students the opportunity to practice their English that they may not be getting outside of class, especially if most of the people they come in contact with on a daily basis are not English speakers
- help students get the English practice they need to reach their life goals in the US
- make class fun and interesting
Despite the many benefits of conversation practice, it can, unfortunately, also be one of the hardest things to get your students to do regardless of if your class is virtual or in person. Many students will freeze up or be reluctant to speak, usually because of a lack of confidence in their vocabulary or grammar skills or a perhaps just a shy personality. So, today I want to share one way I like to get my students talking, with conversation cards.
Conversation cards are, essentially, exactly what they sound like: cards with conversation topics on them. In an in person class I print and cut them into actual cards, but in my virtual classes I just display the topics or questions in a table on the screen. What I love about this activity is that it can be adapted to fit any topic on almost any level of English, with the exception of blank slate beginners who may have no experience with reading, writing, and the English alphabet.
Essentially, you would generate a handful of topics or questions for students to discuss based on what they have been learning in class, and put them onto physical cards for an in person class, or a table for a virtual one. In an in person class I like to display the topics or questions on the board or the projector and give students a few minutes to read the questions to themselves and think about things that they could possibly talk about.
Here is an example of conversation cards about the past that I used with my lesson review about the future:
Now here is my trick, each question or topic can only be done by one student. This is important because it increases the number of students who volunteer. During the 5 minutes the students took to read the conversation topics, students will have naturally identified the ones that they think they could do, and the ones that they definitely do not want to do. Because each topic can only be done once, and everyone has speak, my students – even the ones that don’t normally volunteer, will rush to speak so that they can choose the card that will be easiest for them to accomplish.
The rules are that each student has to speak on their topic for at least a full minute (30 seconds if the class is large or perhaps you have very low beginners), and that each student has to ask their classmates two follow up questions. So, if the chosen topic is what you did last weekend a follow up question could be something like who did you do them with?
This activity could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the size of your class and how many questions the students ask their classmates, and I have found that once I get my students talking they really get into it. Students usually love this activity so much that I have actually had students request this activity during class! So give this activity a try and get your students talking! Feel free to use this template to create your own conversation cards and let us know how it goes below in the comments or on our Facebook page.
Happy Teaching!