Fun Activities to Get Teens Talking

Hello, Max-E Mates! If you are an English teacher and planning to conduct speaking activities in your class, here are three ideas for activities that encourage students to use English:

1. Keep Talking!

This game needs zero preparation, so is great to use as an end-of-lesson filler. Give students a piece of paper and tell them to write a word – it can be a noun, adjective, verb… anything goes.

Collect in the papers. On the board, put 10 lines (lives). Invite a student to come to the front and explain that they’re going to talk for a minute about one of the words, chosen at random.

Each time they use their first language, become repetitive or hesitate, they lose a life. Keep a tally of the scores – the aim is to have the most lives left at the end of the minute.

2. Post-it People

This is a fun game to practice question formation. Each student is given a sticky note with a word or name on it, which they have to stick to their forehead without looking. 

They then ask each other questions to find out what the word is or who the person is. For example:

Is it a man?

Is he a sports star?

Is he Australian?

3. Create a character

In this activity, students create a character together. Ask them questions such as:

Is it a man or a woman?

What are his hobbies?

What’s his favorite food?

Draw the character on the board, using their answers. They can then use the character to practice different grammar points. For example, they could focus on the second conditional:

If he won a million euros, what would he spend the money on?

If he could have any superpower, what would it be?

You can either provide the students with the questions, or they can write their own.

Quick tip:

Look for speaking games and activities where learners can practice speaking in pairs. This will be much less intimidating for them than speaking in front of the whole class.

Source: “Fun activities to get teens talking” Cambridge Assessment English