Ideas for conversation

10 IDEAS FOR CONVERSATION

INTRODUCTION
Here is a selection of 10 ideas for use with adult learners to stimulate conversation and speaking. Most of them are not my own original ideas and mostexperienced teachers probably already know most of them. You will find variations of these ideas in almost any TEFL book. If you work with other teachers try these ideas out in the staffroom as well.SPEAKING FOR 1 MINUTE:
For small groups. You have a list a subjects to talk about. e.g. Football, the sex life of the inside of a ping-pong ball, cooking. etc. You choose one person to start talkingabout the subject. If the person repeats a word, hesitates or makes a gramatical error, another person in the group can take over by saying error, hesitation or repetition. It is the teachers job todecide quickly if the interruption is valid. The person who interrupts them must continue. The winner is the person talking at the end of the minute.

YES/NO GAME
Everyone must have played the gamein which one person must avoid saying yes or no when asked many questions by the others in the group. The winner is the person who can survive longest. Strangely it seems to be less difficult for anon-native speaker to avoid saying yes/no

CALL MY BLUFF
You need a big (bilingual) dictionary for this one. A student looks in the dictionary and finds a word which seems very obscure. That studentgives a definition of the word to the others. The definition must be either 100% true or 100% false. When the student has finished the others must decide if the definition was bluff or true. Thestudent receives a point for each person who is decieved.

VARIATION:
Instead of using definitions. The students must tell the others something about themselves which is 100% true or 100% false. E.G.I always tell them that my second cousin was the tallest ever woman to live in Britain and tell them some things about it. This happens to be true. This is an excellent game for compulsive liars....