TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

NB I have adapted this activity from Deck of Conversations, on the onestopenglish website.

Suggested Levels: elementary and above .

Aims: to practise speaking, listening and polite turn-taking in informal conversations.

Materials needed: dice and students; a list of conversation topics.

Procedure: Before the class, prepare a list of conversation topics, one for each number of the dice; these should be a mixture of “talk about” and “ask about” topics, as below: 1 = tell the group about your family 2 = ask about another student’s country 3 = tell the group about your home town 4 = reveal your pet hates to the group 5 = talk about your best friend 6 = ask another student about their favourite film or book If you have enough dice, you could increase the number of topics to 12, thereby facilitating longer conversations. In class, divide your students into groups of three or four. This activity works best if they then sit in a circle together. Give out the topic lists and explain the rules (below).

• Students take it in turns to throw the dice and ask or answer questions according to the topic list.
• If they throw the same number twice, they can either throw again or give more information about that topic.
• Once a student has started talking about a topic, any other student in the group can ask for more information, or ask a question, etc.

It is best if the teacher, having set up the task, monitors unobtrusively, perhaps even leaving the classroom for a few minutes if conversation is overly stilted and false – this often helps encourage students to talk and to engage with the topic, as they know they are free to say what they like, without fear of having their mistakes picked up on and boarded by the teacher. Stop this activity after about ten minutes and get some brief feedback. This is a good time to offer corrections as they arise, or to secretly note down mistakes for group feedback at the end of the lesson.