This speaking and listening activity consists of a video warm-up activity and food conversation questions.
As a warm-up activity watch this video on the 15 best foods around the world. Have students take notes on each food as they watch.
What is it made of?
How was it prepared?
Where does it come from?
Have you ever tried that?
After you watch the video, put students in groups or pairs, and have them compare notes and discuss what foods from the video they’ve tried or would like to try.
A tip, whenever I need my student to work in pairs or teams, I use Random Team Generator. It’s super easy and convenient.
Food conversation questions
Do you eat to live or do you live to eat?
Which food did you hate as a kid?
Which food did you love as a kid but hate now?
If you could only eat three meals for the rest of your life what would you eat?
What kind of sweets do you like?
What is your favorite snack?
What do you think about cooking shows?
Do you think it’s important to know how to cook?
What is your favorite fast food?
What food would you choose to eat as your first meal after a year abroad?
What food would you choose as your last meal?
What is your favorite condiment?
What food do you eat in your country when celebrating something or during holidays?
Who are better cooks, men or women?
What is your favorite cuisine? What do you like about it?
What is the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?
What is the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?
I don’t know about your corner of the world, but here in Central Europe summer has arrived with full force. It’s scorching hot. I finally understand the 3-hour siesta they have in some countries. Who would want to move, or think in this heat? So I cut my students some slack, we play scrabble and have fun. The testing is over, the school term ends in a few days, field trips have been canceled because of Covid-19, there is not much left to do. And did I mention it’s boiling hot and our building doesn’t have AC? Right, so let’s have som fun.
This speaking activity contains 25 fun ESL discussion questions for teenagers and adult learners. (16+, B1+). It is best for small groups or as a pair-work.
The slideshow can be used as a resource for online teaching, just share your screen on Zoom or other app when teaching online. Click on the full screen option in the top right corner of the slideshow and your whole group can discuss or if you want to use the activity in smaller groups, assign your students into breakout rooms and send them the PDF with the discussion questions before your lesson. During the lesson, pop into the breakout rooms to listen in and observe.
Slideshow
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1. What’s the closest thing to real magic?
2 .Who is the messiest person you know?
3. What will finally break the internet?
4. What’s the most useless talent you have?
5. Where is the worst smelling place you’ve been?
6. What celebrity would you rate as a perfect 10?
7. What’s a body part that you wouldn’t mind losing?
8. What is the dumbest way you’ve been injured?
9. Which fictional character would be the most boring to meet in real life?
10. What are the best and worst purchases you’ve ever made?
1. If you had to change your name, what would your new name be, and why would you choose that name?
2. What are some things that sound like compliments but are actually insults?
3. What’s your biggest screw up in the kitchen?
4. What’s the worst commercial you’ve recently seen? Why is it so bad?
5. What is the craziest thing one of your teachers has done?
6. When did you screw everything up, but no one ever found out it was you?
7. What elements of pop culture will be forever tied in your mind to your childhood?
8. If you could know the absolute and total truth to one question, what question would you ask?
9. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read or seen this week?
10 .What ridiculous thing has someone tricked you into doing or believing?
This activity for adults and teenagers contains five ESL conversation topics and fifty conversation questions. It starts with everyone’s most favorite topic: Tell me something about you. People love to talk about themselves, so let them! You can also watch this interesting Ted Talk about being ourselves. If you love Scottish accent as much as I do, watch also this.
Other included ESL conversation topics are Future, Society, Culture, and Environment.
The slideshow can be used as a resource for online teaching: share your screen on Zoom or other app when teaching online. Click on the full screen option in the top right corner of the slideshow and your whole group can discuss or if you want to use the activity in smaller groups, assign your students into breakout rooms and send them the PDF with the conversation questions before your lesson. During the lesson, pop into the breakout rooms to listen in and observe.
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Popular ESL Conversation Topics
You
Use five words to describe who you are. Explain.
What makes you happy?
Who is the most important person in your life?
Name three things you couldn’t live without.
What do you love about your life?
What do you hate about your life?
What would you like to change about your life?
Which character from a book/movie would you like to be and why?
What do you value in other people?
What do you like about yourself?
Future
Do you plan everything or do you like to be spontaneous?
Do you want to study at university? Why?
What would you like to do with your life in 10 years?
How do you think the world will change in 20 years?
Do you think humans will colonize space one day?
If you could know three facts about any specific time in the future, what would you like to know?
Would you rather travel to the future or the past?
What are you looking forward to?
What scares you about your future?
What would you say to your future 70-year-old self?
Society
In your opinion, what are the most serious issues in our society?
How would you describe your community?
How do you imagine the ideal society?
What values are important to you?
How do legal drugs harm our society?
How has society changed in the last 20 years?
Which changes in our society do you dislike? Why?
What is the influence of technology on our lives?
Have you ever broken any rules?
Which laws/rules should be changed?
Culture
How would you define culture?
How is the culture of your country different from the others?
Is there any culture that you admire/like?
Do you think globalization can destroy the local culture?
Which aspects of different cultures can you find in your community?
Which part of your culture is the most important to you? Why?
Which customs and traditions are typical for your culture/region?
Is there anything about your culture that you don’t like?
What do people from different cultures have in common?
Which culture would you like to know more about?
Environment
Which environmental issue is, in your opinion, the most serious?
Can individual efforts make any change to improve the environment?
How environmentally conscious are you?
What can businesses do to behave more eco-friendly?
What do you think about Zoos?
What do you think about hunting?
How do you feel about the future of our planet?
Which industry is the most harmful to the environment?
If you could, what 3 laws would you introduce to protect the environment?
Do you think veganism is more eco-friendly than eating meat?
I sometimes watch, or more accurately, watched (because Covid) Netflix with friends. We always use English subtitles, as my friends want to improve their English. Sometimes they ask me to translate a word or a phrase, sometimes I don’t mind and sometimes it bothers me. But my lack of patience with my friends is not the point.
The point is, I’ve noticed one thing all my friends had in common. They often didn’t understand the meaning of a certain phrasal verbs.
This ESL Netflix video lesson plan is based on “The Mind, Explained” docuseries that answers the questions about our brains. What is going on inside my head? How does memory work? Why do I dream?
The show has six episodes: Memory, Dreams, Anxiety, Mindfulness, Psychedelics. Each twenty-minute episode explains the mysteries of our brains in an engaging, fun way, with plenty of real-life examples, graphics, and experts. Students like this format, many of them already know Vox and their videos and each episode is the right length for a video lesson with warm-up questions, vocabulary, and after-video discussion.t
