I thought I’d give you an activity today that really makes your learners talk - not about their weekend, not about food or holidays, but about something that actually gets them thinking and laughing at the same time.
When I had this idea, my first thought was ‘will that really work?!’ But I tried it out with my partner and it made him laugh, so see how your class likes it. it’s called
Parallel Universe Conversations…
Hi, I’m Jo Gakonga from ELT-Training.com and if you’ve been around here a while, you’ll know I love a good, low-prep speaking activity. This one’s perfect for groups who enjoy a bit of imagination and debate, for practicing opinions, more advanced comparisons and hypotheticals. You can use it face-to-face or online and all you need is a board or a slide with a few prompts.
Here’s the idea.
You tell your learners that in this world everything’s normal… except one small detail.
And that difference changes everything.
Start with an example- coffee makes people fall asleep- and elicit the advantages and disadvantages of this: how it would change things. Think about what cafés would serve in the mornings instead, whether more or less coffee would be drunk, whether people would sleep more, if children would be encouraged to drink it?
You could give them some useful language at this point, things like:
- The good/ bad/ best / worst thing would be…
- But imagine if…xxx (past tense)
- I suppose that would mean xxx would xxx…
Now they’ve got the idea, so you show them a few examples of these parallel-universe rules, things like:
- Everyone must compliment three strangers a day to earn money.
- People change jobs every Monday, completely at random.
- Everyone has to sing instead of speak.
- The internet only works underwater.
- People wear badges that show their emotions by colour.
Now ask the groups to discuss what life would be like there in these parallel universes. What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?
Encourage them to think practically and imaginatively:
- How would schools work if everyone sang instead of spoke?
- Would people be happier or more anxious if everyone could see their emotions?
They can choose which one they want to start with and go on to and all the group members should make notes. Give them 5-10 minutes on this, listening for errors to correct after this stage (you could focus on hypotheticals for example).
Next, mix the groups up and get them to share their ideas with each other. See what different thoughts they had and encourage them to think about using the language more accurately this time.
Finally, their task is to decide which world they’d most like to live in… and why.
Again, you could input some language here depending on the level:
- I’d (much) rather... than….
- No chance! I couldn’t handle xxx.
It’s also a good opportunity to practice polite disagreement and persuasion language:
I see what you’re saying but… / I’d say that… / Surely it’d be better if…
When you bring them back together, you could do some further delayed error correction and ask them to notice whether they used the language you gave them? Or any other useful language?
I love this activity because it’s very low prep: just six prompts. It gets genuine interaction and it’s a really creative opening for a task-based lesson practising agreeing, disagreeing, speculating, persuading.
If you liked this and you want more practical classroom ideas, check out ELT-Training.com including my Communication Activities resource. There are lots of other great ideas like this and it’s completely FREE.
And if you try this one out, let me know which universe your students chose.
