Top 5 ESL Games to Get Students Talking | Make TEFL Conversation Lessons Better With Fun Activities

Many of our students say they want to practice their conversation skills. You can use these English conversation activities to help them do just that and to work on speaking more fluently at the same time. These ESL conversation games and activities are interactive, engaging, and student-centred. Try out some fun ESL speaking games today. Watch this video for tips and games on how to incorporate ESL games into your classroom to get your students excited about learning! Check out the blog post after for some more great ideas for getting your students talking in English class. Even more ESL convo games and activities here: https://www.eslactivity.org/top-7-english-conversation-activities-for-adults/ --------------------------- Even more fun ideas for teaching English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMaxTc1StFM& ----------------------------- Want to find out more about teaching ESL speaking and conversation? 101 ESL Activities for Adults: https://amzn.to/2QEqH1B https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ https://www.tiktok.com/@englishwithjackie?lang=en #teachingenglishwithjackie #teachingenglish #eslteachers #eslgames #eslactivities --------------------------- More fun ideas for the TEFL classroom: https://eslspeaking.org/ -------------------------- Even more ESL speaking activities from @Charlie's Lessons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LFXdmHkUvE&t=4s ------------------------- Timestamp 0:00 Intro 0:08 Just a minute 0:50 Information gap activities 1:14 Getting to know you bingo 1:52 Debate 2:25 Find something in common 3:10 Conclusion Transcript for ESL conversation activities and games: This is jackie from eslspeaking.org. So let's talk about the top five ESL games to get students talking. The first one is just a minute (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnJOTGxaN9w&t=1s). Put students into groups of four and then number them: one, two, three, four. Write a bunch of topics on the board: hobbies, family, sports, movies, TV, whatever. You can even get students to shout out things that they want to talk about. Scrunch up a paper ball and throw it at the board. It'll hit one of the words or come close to one of the words. Then the first person in each of the groups has to talk about that topic for one minute without stopping. The other three people in the group have to listen and then ask a follow-up question related to what they said and then continue with numbers two, three, and four. The challenge of this game is to talk for the entire minute and then also to ask an interesting and relevant follow-up question. Number two: information gap activities and games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quJnHU7HWCA). These get students talking because each student has half the information and they have to interact with each other to get the full set. For example, a classic one would be a map with different locations on each map and students have to ask, "What's next to the bank?" or, "What's across the street from the school?" and then fill in the blanks on their paper. Alright, number three is getting to know you bingo. So I have students fill in their cards with things that they think some people but not everybody in the class will be able to say yes to. For example, has a brother, grew up in the city where your school is, likes pepperoni pizza, is a vegan, etc., whatever. For lower-level students, you could give a list of things already. Higher-level students, you can give some examples and then they can fill in the card themselves. After that they have to circulate around the class, asking their classmates questions and the goal is to get maybe a line or to cover all the squares, whatever you decide you want that to be. Number four is a debate. I like to do very simple debate debates. I choose a controversial topic and I ask who disagrees, and who agrees. Ideally, it's kind of an even match and then those two students will get together: one agrees, one disagrees and have a little debate. And then I will get each group if it's a small class to summarize kind of what they talked about in the main points. So there are a ton of different ways you could do this and you could even do it as an entire class activity if you wanted. Then finally the last game to get people talking is to find something in common. This is an excellent icebreaker activity to do on the first day of class. Each student has to stand up with a pen and paper and they have to circulate around the class, talking to as many classmates as possible, asking them questions and the goal is to find something in common with that person. For example, do you play the piano? Or, do you play a musical instrument? What kind of sports do you like? What's your favourite food? How long have you studied English? What's your hometown? etc. Once they find that thing that they have in common, they can write down that person's name and then also jus