Problem and advice - English conversation games and activities for higher level students

49 ESL Conversation Games & Activities - Jackie Bolen 2020

Problem and advice
English conversation games and activities for higher level students

Skills: Reading/Writing/Speaking

Time: 30-40 minutes

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Materials Required: Nothing

This is an excellent activity for should/shouldn’t and better/better not. Write down a problem such as a high school student studying for a university entrance exam who is exhausted and can’t sleep at night. Have the students prepare some advice for that person in groups of 2-4. When everyone is ready, have the groups share their answers with the class. The most helpful and clear advice gets a prize of some kind; you can either choose the winner or have the class vote on it.

With very large classes, consider making bigger groups of 5-6 students to reduce the amount of groups sharing their advice with the class. It gets repetitive after a few of them as much of the advice is quite similar.

Teaching Tips:

This also makes an excellent homework activity if you get the students to make a video talking about their advice for a certain problem. To make it even more fun, I'll often make my own video of the problem and put it up on YouTube for them to watch, either in class or at home. I usually ham it up a bit and add some drama and may perhaps even have a friend make a guest appearance. Students love seeing their teacher on YouTube!

Giving some advice or an opinion in a polite way is an important functional skill that students need to learn and this activity is particularly helpful for that. It's worthwhile to spend some time talking about how to make advice more, or less, polite depending on the circumstance.

Procedure:

1. Think of a problem of some kind, depending on the topic being taught and the level of the students.

2. Ask students to give some advice to that person. Give them time to prepare their presentation in small groups.

3. Each team does a short presentation in front of the class sharing the advice that they came up with. The teacher can choose the best, or have the class vote on it.