Fun speaking activities for esl beginners
Speaking in a foreign language is one of the fastest ways to master it. Enabling them opportunities to practice verbal communication is a challenge to all teachers. Throughout the years I found that this is a great warm up speaking exercise for students in the intermediate and advanced ranges as it really challenges all their vocabulary and speaking skills. You basically need the students to introduce you to the simplest of concepts, such as:. Good thing about this is that questions you can ask are boundless and the more familiar the subject the better. Pick a student to explain one concept to you and allow them minutes to give you the summary.
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Content:
- ESL Speaking Activities for Kids & Adults
- Learning English
- 18 ESL Speaking Activities for Adults: Free Their Inner Kids
- How to Use VOA Learning English for Speaking, Writing
- 8 Speaking Activities for English A1 Learners
- First Day: First lesson speaking activities
- ESL Speaking: Games, Activities, and Resources for English Teachers
- Free English Online
ESL Speaking Activities for Kids & Adults
The improvement of speaking skills is crucial for each language learner. In the case of a large class, with the help of pair work and group work activities, we can arrange very interactive and fun speaking activities. Things get a little bit hard when we deal with one-to-one classes. In these cases, teachers need to think of more engaging activities that will keep the student involved.
In this article, we will present a list of cool speaking activities for one-to-one classes. The teacher prepares a list of controversial statements and gives them to the student.
For the next stage, the teacher asks the student to express the opposite viewpoint to his previous opinions. This technique stretches the learner morally, intellectually and mentally. Below you can find a few statements which can be used for this activity. Choose those ones which are suitable for the topic you discussed in the previous lesson or going to cover in the current lesson:.
The elevator speech. Do your students like role plays? A teacher can play the role of the partner in different scenarios. A few days later, the student meets the CEO of the company in the elevator. So he has 60 seconds to speak to the CEO and persuade him that his idea is worth investing time and money.
As time is very limited the student needs to pay attention to the right use of the intonation, use modifiers and intensifiers fully, totally, extremely, absolutely, etc. One the other hand this is a nice fluency activity.
Apart from the linguistic benefits, this activity will be a great motivational tool for one-to-one classes since they oftentimes lack dynamics and fun. Here are some more elevator speech scenarios:. Being able to speak for extended periods of time is a skill that is essential in modern life. Students give presentations, deliver monologues at exams, speak at conferences etc. This activity is similar to the previous one. TED talks are always a great way to implement diversity in the learning process.
You can watch TED talks for a certain period of time, discuss them, write out the unknown vocabulary, etc. Before the presentation, you can discuss the usual structure of TED talks, provide the learner with some functional language, analyze some basic body language used in TED speeches.
With extended presentations, it is a good idea to provide some assessment criteria such as clarity, speed of delivery, appropriate intonation, body language. The key to this lesson is your feedback and let them try giving the presentation again if they wish.
Critical thinking. Students have to think outside of the box in their daily life let it be in the office or for personal issues. Therefore, it would be a nice idea to implement lateral thinking speaking activities for one-to-one classes. This will motivate the learners since they not only boost their speaking but also critical thinking skills.
Here is a link to a number of other activities aimed at developing critical thinking and speaking. Get outside of the classroom.
It is a common thing that students are more motivated when they see how they can implement their language knowledge in real-life scenarios. With group classes, it may be difficult to organize lessons outside of the classroom, but with individual students, it is much easier to manage.
You can have a lesson in the restaurant business meeting language and restaurant language , you can book a hotel room, go shopping, etc. This is fun, engaging and surely authentic. Find more speaking activities for one-to-classes here. It is quite challenging to have one-to-one classes since students usually get bored just because of the fact that all the focus is on them, they communicate only with the teacher. With the activities offered by us, the teacher has the chance to cut down on the common question-answer interview scenarios and offer speaking cases with varied scenarios.
The activities are extremely helpful! Thank you!!! Speaking Activities for One-to-one Classes The death penalty is acceptable in some cases. Military service should be obligatory. Torture can be acceptable in some cases. Curfews keep teens out of trouble. Smoking should be banned worldwide. Single-sex schools are evil.
Soft drugs should be legalized. The elevator speech Do your students like role plays? Here are some more elevator speech scenarios: A screenwriter has 1 minute to convince a Hollywood producer to shoot a film based on his script.
A travel agent has 1 minute to convince the tourist to take their trip An applicant has 60 seconds to convince the employer to hire him A shop assistant has 1 minute to convince the buyer to purchase the products from their shop and not go to the supermarket which sells the same product at a cheaper price.
This is a good exercise to practise spoken discourse markers, summarising and paraphrasing skills. Teenagers would enjoy two-minute talks if it is set in the task of an audition. Ask them to imagine that they are going to take part in an audition for their favourite TV-series. They rehearse and practise saying their lines in a variety of different ways to be sure they convey the appropriate emotion. If your learner really want to improve their spoken English intonation, stress patterns, connected speech, rhythm , give them scripts to work from.
Push them to stand up, move around and use body language and gestures. Ask them to read a line in different ways. TED Talks This activity is similar to the previous one. Critical thinking Students have to think outside of the box in their daily life let it be in the office or for personal issues. A classmate has their head down on the desk.
Give at least two reasons why. The teacher assigns you extra homework over the weekend. Get outside of the classroom It is a common thing that students are more motivated when they see how they can implement their language knowledge in real-life scenarios.

Learning English
Every student learns a little differently. Luckily, there are hundreds of creative vocabulary, writing, listening, and speaking activities for ELLs to choose from. Just remember — you know your students best, so choose and adjust the activities that work best for your classroom! ELL newcomers must build their English vocabularies quickly and exponentially. Here are some of our favorite in-context and isolated vocabulary activities for ELLs. In addition to listening and speaking activities for ELLs , writing is less time-depending and therefore offers unique opportunities to build vocabulary in context and demonstrate critical thinking.
18 ESL Speaking Activities for Adults: Free Their Inner Kids
This is one of my favorite speaking projects by far. Show students some typical adverts from a shopping channel; I like to show some of the funnier products just for giggles and to encourage students minds to wander, take a look at this compilation to see what I mean. Next, I ask students usually in pairs to come up with their own completely original product to sell on an infomercial. If students struggle to come up with a completely new product you can suggest they add a new twist to arnold product, or make a new product based on a combination of two or more others. For example, in the past I have had: microwave televisions, hair dryers that double as vacuum cleaners and laptops that double as portable stoves. I tend to also do a language lesson based around the language of selling and persuasion so that when students make their infomercial they will send realistic and they often like to know some of the sales phrases, tactics and strategies that are used in real life. Just for fun, you can tell students that they have a certain amount of money to spend and after they have seen all the infomercials they get to spend it. Give students a presentation of a topic of your choosing, perhaps your own hobby and model the format and language that you want the students to use. I tend to share slides with the student with the title of each slide already inserted. Students then have to fill the space with suitable information for that slide.
How to Use VOA Learning English for Speaking, Writing

The following are five quick activities that can be used to encourage speaking in first classes of a course or school year. All have been tested in actual classroom environments and proven to get students talking with a little help of their teachers, of course. Check out our Kahoot! Expert author Carol Read explains all, offering tips and practical advice. In the last article in this series, ELT pronunciation expert Adrian Underhill looks at how to overcome common pronunciation problems.
8 Speaking Activities for English A1 Learners
Blank stares. The shy kid in the class trying very hard to become invisible. ESL students doing pair activities can often try to skive off doing the activity at hand. Shyer students can be tempted to let their partner do all the work. As far as the teacher is concerned, it can be tough making sure that the students who are actually working are speaking correctly.
First Day: First lesson speaking activities
If you want to be truly fluent in English and become a confident speaker you need to practice speaking with Native English speakers. Learn More. It can be very daunting to start learning a new language. Beginners need to build their confidence as soon as possible when they begin to learn to speak English. This is where various English speaking exercises become useful. If beginners are interested in the topics being discussed they will happier to be involved in the lessons and start talking.
ESL Speaking: Games, Activities, and Resources for English Teachers
Ted talks : How to end the pandemic — and prepare for the next. Audiobook: Short Stories. Please let me know if you find a mistake or a broken link.
Free English Online
RELATED VIDEO: Top Speaking Games/ Activities! ESLCurious how to teach English to beginners? Think back to your childhood. Do you remember when an adult asked you something and you just stared open-mouthed not because you were trying to be rude or anything because it was all gobbledygook to you? Put yourself in their shoes—how would you feel if some stranger starts saying weird stuff at you and expects you to reply in the same alien language? Still need your golden ticket—aka TEFL certificate?
View related sites. You are here: Cambridge English Learning English Activities for learners This activity helps you to practise using like in different sentences. This exercise practises listening for simple factual information. This activity helps you practice using words to do with time and place. Add some prepositions to a story about going on a family holiday. Learn about how to use see in spoken English.
Controlled speaking activities are opportunities in the classroom for EL students to practice specific target academic language or vocabulary. They often include repetition and a specific target language for students to practice. Examples of controlled practice activities include repetitive games and fill in the blank exercises. The goal is for students to accurately use the target language repeatedly through a variety of engaging methods.
Totally agree with her. I think this is a great idea. I agree with you.
I'm sorry, but in my opinion, you are wrong. We need to discuss. Write to me in PM, it talks to you.
Yes indeed. I agree with all of the above. We can communicate on this theme.