Dec 16

Best Ever Speaking Activity (with no prep)

Speaking practice

Icebreaker - Guaranteed to get your class speaking - No prep required!

Looking for an activity to liven up a Monday morning or finish Friday with a BANG? I've used this countless times and it's never failed. 


Video transcript


Have you got a class who don’t communicate very well together? Is it Monday morning or Friday afternoon and you need a quick something to really liven them up? a topic for a really engaging conversation? if you do keep watching.

If this is the first time we’re meeting, I’m Jo Gakonga, I’m a teacher educator and I’ve been a CELTA trainer and assessor for over 20 years. I’ve also got a website at ELT-Training.com where I make video-based support material for English language teachers at all stages of their careers. Check it out and if you like this, give it a thumbs up and subscribe, I make a new video every week.

One of the best icebreakers I’ve ever used is this one: What food don’t you like? Not foods that you’re allergic to. Not foods that you don’t eat in principle (for example meat). Just foods that you don’t like.

Everybody likes talking about food and everybody has something that they don’t particularly like. It’s such a universal topic and it tends to elicit responses that are quite animated!

For me, it’s peanuts. I also don’t like any kind of offal, like liver or kidneys or tripe. But peanuts is something that I’ve just never liked. I’m not allergic to them and I’ll eat other nuts very happily, I like THEM, but there’s something about peanuts that I just can’t stand.

Depending on the level of your class, you could teach them some functional language around this.

I can’t stand it/ them
I really hate it/ them
I’ve never liked it/ them

M
ake sure they know that these verbs are transitive- they HAVE TO have an object.

I don’t even like the smell.
It’s disgusting.
My parents made me eat it/ them


Ask them the question and give them a model. The obvious thing is to tell them what YOU don’t like and then get them talking in groups or pairs about this.

I’ve never seen this not work well with a class and you could get them to swap partners and tell somebody else about the food they don’t like or mingle and make groups of people who don’t like the same food. It’s quite surprising what you find out about your class.

Try it with your class soon and let me know how you get on in the comments below. I hope you have fun with it. If you want lots of other ideas for low prep, high output communicative activities, check out the free resource on my website at elt-training.com.

See you there


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