While ESL students will have a lot of exposure to English conversation, this

doesn't mean they'll have the skills or comfort level needed to initiate and
maintain English conversations on their own. Continue reading to learn about
some conversation and speaking activities that will get your students talking.

Conversation and Speaking Activities

Your approach to English as a Second Language (ESL) activities will most likely
vary according to the age and speaking level of your students. Activities that
may seem fun for young English language learners may not be as appealing to
adult professionals; this is why you will want to vary the approach or content
depending upon your audience. Modifications and suggestions for these varying
approaches are included with each activity description. Let's get started!

Role Play
Create a topic, theme, or sentence starter to get a pair of students talking; you
can model the activity with another student first. In front of the class, two
participants try to keep a conversation going until they are told to 'freeze'. At
this point, two other participants will be called forward to keep the conversation
going.

This can be a more serious game for business or adult professionals, or it can be
a silly game for students of all ages. Write themes, sentence frames, or key
vocabulary words on the board as cues to help students out if they get stuck.
Additionally, if you want to make this a team challenge, write bonus cues on the
board; when students use these cues, they earn bonus points for their teams.

Roll a Story
This is a fun game that encourages imagination and the ability to think on the
spot. At the start of the game, create three columns on the board: character,
plot, and setting. Number six different options under each heading. These
options can be tailored to particular vocabulary words, themes, or topics you're
covering in class, as well as tailored to the ages and speaking levels of your
students.

In whole or small group settings, students first roll a dice to determine the
character they will be. Rolling a number 3 means they will talk about the type of
character listed as number 3 under the character heading. Next, students roll
the dice to determine the setting of the story. Then, they roll the dice to
determine the plot of the story. Once they have all three elements, they do their
best to tell a story to the class, or to their group. Here are some fun examples
you can use for each heading:

Character
  A confused clown
 A movie star
 A grumpy old man

Plot

 Was given ten million dollars

 Found a magic lamp
 Found a treasure map

Setting

 On a pirate ship
 At the zoo
 On an airplane

Mystery Guests
This is an activity to encourage questioning skills among your students.
Participants can be in a whole or small group with two to five participants. One
participant, the guesser, will leave the room, while the other participants, the
guests, are given secret identities. When the 'guesser' returns to the room, he or
she will use questioning skills and context clues to identify each person's secret
identity. Once a guest has been identified, he or she will sit down. Once all
guests have been identified, new participants get a chance to play the guesser.

Make sure to keep the students' learning levels in mind when choosing the
guests' secret identities. Some examples can be taken from the character lists
in the 'Roll a Story' game, or you can have students secretly write down ideas on
paper for participants to pull out of a hat.

Conversation Fun Cards

Make a set of conversation cards according to the ages and learning levels of
your students. These cards will have conversation starting questions that help
get students talking. They can be serious, funny, or themed (getting to know you,
seasonal, cultural, etc.). Use these cards to teach students higher-order
questioning skills and how to find more information. Here are a variety of
examples you can use:

Beginner

 What is your favorite food? Why?

 Do you like school? Why or why not?
 Do you like sports? Why or why not?

Intermediate
  What do you like to do in your free time? Why?
 Which is more important, exercise or sleep? Why?
 What type of job would you like to have? Why?

Advanced

 Is it important for children to do chores? Why or why not?

 Should school be all year round, or should students have summer break?
Why?
 If you could time travel, when would you travel to? Why?

Routine Questions
Whether you are teaching many subjects in your classroom, or just one specific
type of English learning (such as business or conversational language or test
preparation), keep a list of relevant routine questions about what you're covering
in class. These could be questions that might appear on a quiz, review important
information, or ask what vocabulary words mean.

Begin by setting a timer and randomly selecting questions from the list for a
student to answer. The student must try to answer as many questions as he or
she can within a set amount of time. Once the student's turn is over, he or she
gets to use the list to question the next student. This activity can be done in a
whole, large, or small group setting. When time is limited, students can do it in
pairs. Here are some examples of basic questions that can be used to warm up
before asking more content relevant questions:

 What is your favorite color?

 How old are you?
 How many people are in your family?
 Do you play any instruments? Which ones?
 What will you eat for lunch today?
 Do you have any pets?

Tell Me About Your Day

This activity can be used as an icebreaker between teacher and students. Start
off by telling your students about your day; include funny or challenging aspects
that help them get to know you a little better. You can also turn the activity into
a conversation by reaching out to students to ask for their opinions, or ask if
they have ever experienced the same things. Once students get talking, you can
direct them to one another and ask them to share what happened during their
school or work days.

This lesson provides you with some activities that elicit speaking skills in adults
learners of ESL. The activities take into consideration important aspects such as
cultural sensitivity, varied skills levels, and engaging topics.
The Speaking Monster
The main fear most ESL adult learners have is the one of speaking. They are
often afraid of their accent, the mistakes they can make, and the shyness that
accompanies their fear. As with any other language skill, it is important you
openly talk to your students about it. When students hear you talk about how
much you understand the challenge that speaking represents, they tend to feel
comforted and reassured to take the first steps. Tell your students speaking is a
wonderful monster because it has a scary appearance but, once you break the
ice, that monster accompanies you everywhere and protects you in every
situation. The speaking monster is a friend who gives people the power of a
voice. The following activities get your students interested in talking/listening as
they learn to love the speaking monster.

To avoid intimidating your students, do not correct them in front of their peers.
As you walk around the class to listen, make a mental note of mistakes and/or
write them down to tell the entire class how to correctly express their ideas by
the end of class. This allows students who made mistakes in their speaking to
correct them without being on the spot.

Talking about Images

The usage of images with ESL adult learners is particularly helpful during your
first lessons with a group. There are two reasons why images are highly
recommended to trigger speaking. First, students get to talk to their peers
without having the pressure to talk about themselves. Your ESL class may be a
mixture of diverse cultures, backgrounds, levels, etc., and this can represent an
intimidating element for many of them. Images are impersonal because they
present students with scenarios that are outside their lives. Second, images with
scenes of diverse nature are adaptable to practice with many tenses and
vocabulary.

Based on the above, you can ask your students to work in pairs. Each pair works
with an image or picture and a set of two or three questions you give them. The
questions are the same for every pair of students. Examples of questions that
are adaptable to images with scenes are:

 What kind of conversation do you think the people in the picture are
having? What are they saying to each other?
 What emotions do you see in the people?
 What do you think happened exactly before the situation you see in the
image?

Once your students start speaking about the pictures they have, you can monitor
their conversation while moving around the room and answering questions as
they arise.
Telling Others about a Reading
For this activity, you must give each of your students a very short story to read.
You can either choose from a news broadcast website or from a fun story
source. Once each student has read the respective story, they will work with a
peer to whom they will orally tell what they read about and what their point of
view is. The listener can ask questions and/or tell her/his opinion of it.

Encourage your students to give reasons for their opinions. For instance, instead
of saying 'I think the story is interesting,' it is best to say 'I think the story is
interesting because there is a scary element to it.'

Find Someone Who. . .

This activity is probably one of the best known speaking triggers ESL teachers
use. Given the presence of varied cultures and backgrounds in an ESL adult
class, this activity is very adaptable. The adaptability of this activity is that it is
appropriate to have your students familiarize with each other without asking
personal questions or to work with classes where students have already
established rapport with each other.

For this activity, you will hand out your students a list of 10-15 prompts that are
the basis to ask around the class. It is strongly recommended to choose
culturally sensitive prompts. This means the statements in your list should be of
universal acceptance and not touch into personal views about race, religion,
gender, etc. Examples are:

Find someone who:

 Has eaten toothpaste when s/he was a child.

 Knows how to ride a motorcycle.
 Has seen a wild animal.

When a student finds a peer who has experienced what the prompt is asking, the
student must tell the interviewer a little bit about the story. The interviewer can
ask questions. To monitor this speaking activity you must go around the class
and be ready to aid students with needed vocabulary and other questions.

Personal Experiences
ESL adult learners will be comfortable speaking about their personal lives once
they have established rapport with each other. Still, it is highly recommended to
give your students a topic that can be openly talked about and in agreement with
a grammar piece you want them to use while speaking. For example: after
reviewing the past tense you can have your students work in groups (maximum
four people) in order to tell the others about an activity they did last weekend, a
meal they particularly enjoyed in the last few days, or an interesting work
experience they recently had.

Your students will be especially encouraged to speak to their peers if you give
them the chance to prepare by writing down some ideas and then organizing
them. Once they are all ready, they can speak to their peers. As you walk around
the class to listen, make positive comments to your students.

Lesson Summary
The speaking activities in this lesson engage students to freely express
themselves without having to feel ashamed. This is an element of paramount
importance in speaking lessons and your students develop self-confidence.