Category Archives: • Lower & Intermediate Levels

• Teacher-Friendly Technique to Keep Conversation Items Current, Relevant and Personalized for Students

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Imagine that you are teaching an ESL Conversation class. It is July 1, 2026. You put students in groups of three and give each member a different list of discussion questions to ask each other while practicing a specific conversation technique.

Which of these questions do you think would be most current, relevant and interesting to answer today, July 1, 2026?
Do you like watching football (soccer)?
Which countries do you hope will be in the World Cup final this month?

Or which of these two would be most current, relevant:
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 would be most current, relevant:
What is the best age to get married?
Did you hear that our classmate, Silvia, got engaged yesterday?

Obviously, the most current and relevant questions today would not be very interesting for students the very next term.

Here is the challenge: We want items to be current and most relevant, but we also want to be able to reuse the handouts every term without have to always update them.

Here is the good news: We can have both—no added workload and still have relevancy.

Here is how we can do that.

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• “It Worked, David!” — A Practical Strategy for Starting and Ending Conversations (Updated for 2026)

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(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, or more accurately, what I was hearing.

One of my shyest students, Eri, sat down next to Liam and said, “I like your backpack.” Liam smiled, opened a secret compartment to show her, and by the time class began, Eri was beaming.

Later, as students were leaving, Anika stopped me and said, “It worked, David!” When I asked what she meant, she told me about waiting at the bus stop the day before. She’d noticed a friendly‑looking older woman and tried something new: “Excuse me. Could I ask you a question?” A short exchange about the Number 8 bus turned into a pleasant conversation about stores at the mall.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. These small but meaningful moments happen often after my students did the activity “Starting and Ending a Conversation.”

Helping students develop this strategy (including a downloadable activity to use with your students).

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• Entering a Lesson with Predictions (Part 2: Pre-Discussion Activities) (Updated)

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Cover pre speaking Pt 2 slide

(This article was originally published in MET (Modern English Teaching) in Spring 1986.)  MET website

In Part 1 ( • Entering a Lesson with Predictions (Part 1: Pre-Listening Activities) , I introduced how we can help student to focus on a particular day’s materials and to become personally involved in its content. We can do it through a “prediction process.” I also described two prediction activities as entries to listening activities.

In this Part 2, I’ll share two sets of “prediction activities” as entries to speaking/discussion activities. In the first one, the prediction activity is indirectly related to the speaking activity. In the second one, it is directly related to what they will be discussing in their groups.

Example of predictions as an indirectly-related “entry” to a speaking activity

Lesson plan:  The students were going to have group discussions about “fun.”

Prediction procedure (which preceded the discussion.) I found online a ranking of the 10 most fun countries in the world.

Step 1: A list of 10 countries in alphabetical order was given to each student. They then individually predicted the ranking of each one according to how fun the online survey found.  Next, they formed groups of three or four and shared their guesses (predictions) with the group members.

Step 2: The teacher read the rankings, as they had been listed in the online source. Students jotted the answers on their lists.

Step 3: Still in their groups, they compared how well they had predicted.

Step 4: The students then formed new groups of three or four. The students were given a list of discussion questions about “fun.” For example
1) Did you have fun last weekend
2) When you were a child, what did you do that was fun?
3) Do you think computers are fun?
4) Is there a country or city you want to go to for fun?
etc.

Observation: Even though the ranking of fun countries had no direct bearing on the discussion that followed, students appeared to automatically think broadly about the topic of fun.

Example of predictions as a directly- related “entry” to a speaking activity

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• They Don’t Want To Stop Talking During This Activity: The Power of the Follow-Up Question

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(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students. The link is at the end of the post.) *

The lights in the classroom are off, but many of the students in pairs continue talking—in the dark!

For most of this class time, students were engaged in a special conversation-skill activity. The class was almost over, so I wanted to get everyone’s attention, “We’ll need to stop in three minutes.” No one seemed to notice me. After three minutes I said that it was time to stop. But hardly anyone flinched. After another three minutes, I turned the lights on and off. Still most continued to talk. So finally, I turned the lights off. Even then in the dark, some pairs continued talking.

This same phenomenon occurs when I’ve presenting this activity at ESL teacher conferences—to NATIVE-ENGLISH SPEAKERS!! Like my ESL students, the teachers continue to talk IN THE DARK!!

One of them even told me after a session, “I wish I could get my husband and son to use this!”

This activity is not only engaging, but it is also developing one of the most important conversation skills. (Below, I’ll attach a link to the activity that you can use to download and use with your students.)

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