49 ESL Conversation Games & Activities - Jackie Bolen 2020

Interesting story and questions
English conversation games and activities for higher level students

Skills: Writing/Reading/Speaking/Listening

Time: 15-30 minutes

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Materials Required: Nothing

Have students write something interesting. Some examples to use are: most embarrassing moment, scariest thing ever done, dreams for the future, etc. Base it on whatever you are teaching in class but it lends itself particularly well to the past tense. Then, distribute the stories to other people in the class. Students have to go around the class, finding the person whose story they have by asking questions. Once they find that person, they have to ask three interesting questions about the story.

Teaching Tips:

Emphasize to students that they are to practice asking good full-sentence questions. For example, “USA?” is not a good question, while, “Did you study abroad in the USA?” is much better.

Also emphasize that students should think of interesting follow-up questions that expand upon their knowledge about that situation. This involves reading carefully so they can avoid asking about things that are already mentioned. You can give your students a couple of minutes before the activity starts to write down a few questions based on the paper they received to help facilitate this. This is particularly useful for lower-level students.

This activity provides an excellent opportunity for students to work on reported speech. This is something that high level students are often surprisingly weak at. With a small class (less than 10), students can report what they learned about their partner to everyone. If larger, students can tell their seating partner what they learned. For example, students might say something like, “I talked to Min-Ji. She told me that she got in a car accident last year. She said that it was really scary, but thankfully nobody got injured seriously.”

Procedure:

1. Have students write an interesting story based on a certain topic. Adjust for length and difficultly depending on the students.

2. Collect stories and redistribute them—one per student, making sure a student does not get their own story.

3. Students go around the class asking people if they have their story. For example, “Did you get in a car accident when you were little?”

4. When they find the person, they must ask them three interesting follow-up questions about it.

5. Do the optional variation of having students tell other people what they learned in order to practice using reported speech.