Category: Resources

ESL  communicative and vocabulary resources. Role-plays, group activities, games. PDF worksheets and lesson plans for easy download and printing.

ESL Teaching Idea: Class Speaking Activity

Level: Upper Intermediate, Advanced

Age: 16+

 Monolingual classes of ESL/EFL                                                                                             

This activity is great for practising fluency and improvising.

1) Tell each student to chose a topic they know a lot about, are passionate about and can talk about it for hours. Give them 5minutes to prepare a short lecture/presentation in their NATIVE language. They can only write brief notes/bullet points. Don’t tell them more at this stage.

2) When they are ready, tell them that they are going to present their lecture/presentation at an international conference, but unfortunately, they don’t speak English so they will need an interpreter. (Explain that they will interpret consecutively.)

3) Put Ss in pairs and explain that they will interpret each other’s presentations. Give them 5-10minutes so they can familiarize themselves with the topic and important vocabulary that will be used in the presentation. At this stage, they can use the notes they previously prepared.

4) The conference starts! The first pair of students gets on stage ( in front of their classmates). The speaker starts their presentation and after every couple of sentences pauses so the interpreter can repeat what was said in the target language. At this stage don’t correct the Ss, let them speak and write notes so you can provide feedback later.

5) Don’t let them speak longer than  5 minutes. If time allows, you can let the audience ask follow-up questions which will need to be translated from L2 into L1 and then the answer back from L1 to L2.

6) After everyone had their turn, provide feedback on the mistakes they made and don’t forget to praise them!

 

Download this activity in a PDF file.

Class Speaking Activity

More speaking activities:

ESL Speaking Activity Worksheet: Business Plan

ESL Group Speaking Activity: Language Centre Simulation

ESL Speaking Activity: Conditional Discussion Questions

ESL Speaking Activity: Business English Role Plays

No-prep Speaking Activity: Warmer And Filler For ESL Classes

ESL Speaking Activity Worksheet: Business Plan

My students loved this speaking activity. It is fun, it is competitive and it kept the students engaged for a loooong time. It is easy to use, just print the worksheet and you are ready to go.

Download the FREE PDF Worksheet>>>>>>Business Plan Worksheet

Try also some other activities and worksheets:

ESL Role Play Worksheet: Travel/Holidays

At The Restaurant: ESL Pair Work and Role Play Lesson.

28 ESL/EFL Conversation Starters to Spark Conversation

Business English Vocabulary Card Game | Forbidden Words

Speaking Resources for ESL/EFL Teachers: Picture Prompts

Speaking Resource for ESL/EFL Teachers: Creative Storytelling

32 Inspirational And Creative Job Interview Questions For ESL/Business English Students.

Picture Based Speaking Activity For ESL/EFL Classes

ESL Speaking Activity: Conditional Discussion Questions

ESL Travel Vocabulary Taboo Cards

This card game is very popular with my students so I’ve created more of them to cover different topics. Below, you can download the ESL travel vocabulary taboo card game.

I mentioned this activity based on Taboo game in an older article 3 Board Games You Can Use In The Classroom, where I wrote about my favorite board games I use in the classroom.  Since that, I’ve created another set of cards, this time focused on Media/Entertainment Media/Entertainment Vocabulary Card Game Based on Taboo.

Every word has three or four “forbidden words” so you can adjust the difficulty of the game
by allowing the students to use one or more of the “forbidden words”.

ESL travel vocabulary taboo cards can be used for revision, different games and students will certainly have lot of fun in the classroom.

Download the printer-friendly PDF activity >>>> Travel&Holidays

This travel vocabulary activity can be used with other resource on the topic of travel, our role play activity that contains five role-play situations: ESL Role Play Worksheet: Travel/Holidays

You will find more Taboo based cards here:

Forbidden Words: Food

Forbidden Words: Health

Vocabulary Taboo Cards: Nature&Environment

You can get all three card games in a bundle, which is a great value: Bundle of Three Taboo Card Games: Food, Health, Nature

ESL Group Speaking Activity: Language Centre Simulation

This is a great ESL group speaking activity  (16+/adults, intermediate/upper intermediate).

It covers various topics: education, jobs, communication.

It teaches the students to co-operate, voice their opinion, it fosters creativity and gives the students enough room to make their own decisions and maintain a certain level of independence.

It is suitable for groups of 4 or 5 students, each of them will choose their role in company management and together they have to plan their language centre business.

Stronger classes need minimal supervision and encouragement, weaker students might need some help (especially when your students are not very creative).

Teacher’s notes are included in the PDF file.

 

Download here>>>>Language Centre

Other speaking actvities:

ESL Speaking Activity: Conditional Discussion Questions

ESL Speaking Activity: Business English Role Plays

32 Inspirational And Creative Job Interview Questions For ESL/Business English Students.

ESL/EFL Speaking Activity: Role Play Debate

Conversation Questions Conditionals: ESL Speaking Activity

Conversation Questions Conditionals: First, Second, Third Conditional


First Conditional

  1. If you don’t go to work tomorrow, what will happen?
  2. What will you do if it rains tomorrow?
  3. What will you do if you learn perfect English?
  4. What will you do if a colleague is rude to you?
  5. What will you do when you retire?
  6. What will happen when we continue polluting the Earth?
  7. What will happen if stop using plastic bags?
  8. What will happen if______________________?
  9. What will you do if______________________?
Looking for more activities? Try 120 Conversation Starters and One-Minute Talk activity.

Second Conditional

  1. What would you do if an alien from outer space landed their spaceship in your
  2. garden?
  3. If there suddenly was no internet, how would the world change?
  4. How would you spend $100 000 in 12 hours?
  5. What would you do if you could fly?
  6. If could go on holiday anywhere in the world, where would you go?
  7. If somebody hit you in the face, what would you do?
  8. If you survived a plane crash in the jungle, how long would you survive?
  9. If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would that be?
  10. If it was possible, would you like to have your own clone?
  11. What would you do if_____________________________?
  12. What would happen if_____________________________?

Third Conditional

  1. If you had been born in a different country, what would have been different in your life?
  2. What would you have done if you had found out you were a lost child of a European monarch and a successor to the throne?
  3. How would your life have been different if you had been growing up with 9 siblings?
  4. If you could have studied something else, what would that have been?
  5. How would your life have changed if you had done something different that one time?
  6. What would have happened last weekend if you had partied all night long?
  7. If you had been born as a child of a Hollywood celebrity, how would your childhood have been different?
  8. If you had been born Quasimodo, how would your life have changed?
  9. If you had been born with 6 fingers on each hand, how would that have changed your life?
  10. What would have happened if_____________________________________?
  11. What would you have done if______________________________________?

Download here>>>>>Conditionals Speaking Activity

Other speaking activities:

ESL Speaking Activity: Business English Role Plays

No-prep Speaking Activity: Warmer And Filler For ESL Classes

32 Inspirational And Creative Job Interview Questions For ESL/Business English Students

ESL/EFL Speaking Activity: Role Play Debate

Will Your Students Steal A Car?: ESL/EFL Simulation Activity

This ESL simulation activity is for a group of four students, B1-B2 level, 15+ age.  

I find it’s best to use this activity after teaching crime vocabulary, and after teaching some basic concepts of peer pressure, argumentation, and manipulation. What I like about this activity is that the character cards don’t tell the students what decisions they should make, it’s purely their choice.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Play and Learn! Kahoot: A Free Learning Platform.

Are you tired of marking vocabulary and grammar tests?

Do you want to revise vocabulary and chunks of grammar quickly?

Do you want to engage your students?

Do you want to have data about your student’s performance in neat Excel sheets readily available for you?

Do you want to play a game as a warm-up or filler, no prep whatsoever?

Do you want to have access to countless learning games?

Are you creative?

Do you enjoy creating your own games and quizzes?

If you answered YES to at least one question, you will love Kahoot. Continue reading Play and Learn! Kahoot: A Free Learning Platform.

Business English Vocabulary Card Game | Forbidden Words

Forbidden Words is a game card activity based on Taboo. The aim of the game is to explain given words, but without those words that you would most likely use because those are taboo – that means, you can’t use them. The simplicity of this game allows for endless variations and you can use it to teach any vocabulary you wish. This is a Business English Vocabulary game for adults and teenagers.

This version contains 27 cards, each with 5 words, which gives you together 105 words you can use for teaching or revision with your students.

Each card contains one keyword (the word you have to explain) and 4 forbidden words which may not be used when explaining the keyword. If it is too difficult to explain the keyword without using forbidden words, you can allow your students to use one or more of the forbidden words.

Download  >>>> Business Vocabulary Card Game I Forbidden Words

Download Travel card game >>>>Travel&Holidays

Download Media card game >>>>Media Card Game

28 ESL/EFL Conversation Starters to Spark Conversation

There are not enough conversation questions in the resource universe to satisfy the needs of an average EFL/ESL teacher. We need more, more! Especially, when you teach one-on-one, the search for good questions can be excruciating.

I put together 28 questions which can help the conversation to get going. Some of them are closed questions, they can be answered by yes or no, but it should be made clear before you start the activity that the students are not allowed to do that.

I suggest that they talk about each question for about 2 minutes, and only after that time the teacher can ask follow-up questions.

Some of the questions can be viewed as a bit controversial, so I recommend you use them with adults or older students.

Download >>>28 Conversation Starters

You can also try my other speaking activity >>>> Role plays- Travel

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