Imagine that you are teaching an ESL Conversation class. You put students in groups of three and give each member a different list of discussion questions to ask each other. Which of these questions do you think would be most relevant and interesting to answer today, December 16, 2023?
-Do you like to go to concerts?
-Are you a fan of Taylor Swift?
Or which of these two:
-Do you worry about money these days?
-Next term, our college’s tuition will increase. Will this be a problem for you?
Or which of these two:
-What is the best age to get married?
-Did you hear that our classmate, Silvia, got engaged yesterday?
Naturally, we’d like to make our discussion questions as relevant and personalized as possible for our students. But that can be a special challenge for a couple of reasons:
1) It would take a lot of time and mental energy to write up a new list of 15 current and personalized discussion questions every term.
2) In the short time that we spend with a new group of students who are often from a different generation from us, it’s very difficult to know what they are currently interested in or what are recent trends among them.
Surprisingly, there is an easy way to make exercises current and personalized. And best of all, the teacher DOES NOT have to revise or update the items in the exercise every term.
This DOES NOT mean that we just tell students to get into groups and talk about anything they want. Instead, we still include structure to the activity.
Here is how we can do that.
To illustrate, we’ll look at an activity designed to practice responding to someone with some details.
Step 1: Focus on the technique
In the first step, students are in groups of three: Student A, Student B, Student C. Each student has a list of general questions, and they cannot see each other’s paper.
During this step, in addition to answering with details, we encourage them to ask follow-up questions to extend the conversations even more. (See • Conversation magic: Two most important techniques. (Part 2)
Step 2: Personalize the questions.
In this step, the three partners in each group write a set of questions together about any topics. This is how the activity becomes current, relevant and personalized for the students without any added work for the teacher.
Here are some recent samples of what students have written.
- Do you plan to attend the International talent show on campus next week?
- Have you seen Avatar: The Way of Water?
- Do your parents treat you like a friend?
- Do you feel less safe in this city now because of the recent crimes?
- Which of our classmates is the funniest: Steve, Danica, Malia or Lars?
It’s recommended that the teacher briefly look over the questions to make sure that they are appropriate before doing the next step. Then, each of the partners make a copy of the questions.
Step 3: Continue practicing the technique with the personalized questions.
In this step, the students form new groups of three or four. They ask their questions and respond with some details, just as they did in Step 1.
It is during this step that students’ focus seems to increase as they become curious not only about what questions their classmates have written but also about how their partners will answer theirs. Also, the volume of their voices tends to rise, and we can hear a lot of laughing.
For samples of activities that include this personalized approach that you can use with your students, see
• Conversation Activity: Getting Students to Say More Than the Minimum
• Customized Speaking/Listening “Game” (Actually, more than just a game.)
• Conversation Technique: Don’t Kill the Conversation. What to Say When You Don’t Know What to Say.
• Want Your Students to Seem More Likeable? Research Says: Teach Them Follow-up Questions
David Kehe
*About the free-download materials. During my 40 years of teaching ESL, I have had many colleagues who were very generous with their time, advice and materials. These downloads are my way of paying it forward.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 