“Expert” conversation activity - English conversation games and activities for higher level students

49 ESL Conversation Games & Activities - Jackie Bolen 2020

“Expert” conversation activity
English conversation games and activities for higher level students

Skills: Speaking/Listening

Time: 20-30 minutes

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Materials Required: Nothing

Students write down five things that they’re an expert in. Once they've written their lists, they circle the three that they think will be most interesting to other students in the class. Next, divide the students up into pairs and give them about 5-6 minutes to ask some questions to their partner about things they are experts in (the things they circled). Keep changing partners for as long as you want the activity to last, but more than 3-4 times gets boring.

Teaching Tips:

This is a particularly useful activity for practicing many of the speaking sub-skills such as initiating a conversation, turn-taking, and appropriate length of responses. Pre-teach some of these things before beginning the activity. For example, show students how to initiate a conversation by saying something like, “I see you're interested in ... .

What/where/why/when/who/how ...?”

Or teach students about appropriate length of responses by doing one bad example and then one good example. Continue with the bad example by rambling on and on until the students are feeling a little bit uncomfortable and they'll see clearly what you mean.

If possible, try to get students to talk to someone that they don't know. This is particularly helpful for the students who don't know anybody else in the class, or don't have a friend. Having a five minute conversation with someone makes you feel like you actually know them and these students won't be so alone in future classes. I do this by asking students to choose partners to go with whose names they don't know.

Procedure:

1. Talk about what “expert” means with students. Tell them five things that you're an expert in.

2. Students make a list of five items.

3. Students choose the three things that they think will be most interesting to the others in the class. Tell students to do the same with their own lists.

4. Students find a partner and talk together for 5-6 minutes about the chosen topics. Starting the conversation, turn-taking and changing topics is up to them.

5. Students switch partners and continue.