49 ESL Conversation Games & Activities - Jackie Bolen 2020

Daily schedule speaking activity
English conversation games and activities for lower level students

Skills: Speaking/Listening/Writing

Time: 10-20 minutes

Level: Beginner to Low-intermediate

Materials Required: Nothing

It seems that in most beginner ESL textbooks there is a unit on daily schedules, such as, "What time do you get up?" or, "What do you do in the afternoon?" A fun activity is to have students interview their partners. Pre-select questions for lower level classes or let the students choose their own questions for higher levels. Make sure to specify a minimum number of questions if you let the students choose their own (beginners = 6-8, intermediate = 10+). Have students jot down a few notes as they go.

Then, they have to close their notebooks and in a group of four, explain their partner's daily schedule to the other pair in the group. The other group can ask a question or two to the person whose schedule was talked about. Put some example questions on the board to help beginner students with this part of the activity.

Teaching Tips:

This is an excellent activity to turn a boring topic into something that's moderately interesting. Being able to talk about daily schedules is quite an important thing for our learners to be able to do, so ignore the temptation to just skip this section when you come to it in your textbook.

I usually give students a set amount of time to interview their partner such as 3 minutes x 2 = 6 minutes. So each person has to ask questions for three entire minutes and then answer questions for the same amount of time. I emphasize that if the three minutes is not up, they can think of another 1-2 questions to ask. After the first three minutes, I'll say, “Stop, change” so that students don't have to keep track of the time themselves.

While reported speech is kind of a higher level concept, introduce it briefly in this activity and provide some concrete examples for students to follow. This happens when two teams join together and are reporting what they learned about their partner to the other pair. For example, “Jen said that she ...,” or “Tim told me that he ... .”

For beginner level students, be very explicit about the kinds of questions and answers students can use and make sure they have access to examples of them, either in the textbook or on the whiteboard.

Procedure:

1. Assign the task to the students, specifying if they must ask questions that you've prepared for them, or if they make their own and how many questions. If students write their own questions, it usually takes about two minutes/question for beginners and one minute/question for intermediate level students.

2. Put students in pairs and they can interview their partner about their daily schedule, taking brief notes.

3. Students switch interviewer/interviewee roles.

4. Put each pair with another pair to do the reported speech task.

5. Student A introduces student B to the other pair. The other pair has a chance to ask some follow-up questions.

6. Continue until all four students' daily schedules have been introduced.