A selection of English ESL speaking - conversation printables

A speaking marathon with two sets of 30 questions on a variety of issues. Good for any stand-in lesson or a 'freestyle' discussion class since as you see it's a whole bag of unrelated topics. You can also select whatever's relevant and just relish a lively conversation. 

Like a house on fire...? - speaking marathon

In this set of conversation speaking cards, this is getting the students to use Passive Voice and Present simple tense. It also get the students to talk for a period of time and explain their answers.

Conversation Speaking Cards

A conversation game about what is funny and what is silly. Students are expected to answer in complete sentences. In preparation the teacher might discuss what constitutes fun and silliness and why each is important to our lives.

Christmas role playing -
https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-worksheets/speaking-practice/role-play-miming-drama-activity-or-improv-game/christmas/christmas-role-play-oprahs-favorite-things-not/112365


Role Play Boardgame - What's So Funny?

AIMS:
The major aim of this exercise is to talk about past activities.
•	to practice Past Simple Tense
•	to illustrate past activities
•	to practise informal conversation
•	to increase vocabulary of verbsCONTEXT:Tell your students they can imagine a conversation with their best friend who is really stressed and they are having a talk on how to take care of oneself.PROCEDURE:
1.	Tell your student(s) to get into pairs and inform them that they are going to exchange information on when they did some activities last time.2.	IN A GROUP: pre-teach the vocabulary necessary to talk about past activities in the worksheet. This activity is a great follow up after lessons on Past Simple Tense. Present your students with the context and one or two examples. Tell your students to work in pairs and write their answers in the worksheet. Instruct them to focus on past forms of the verbs in answers. Finally, ask your group for feedback, ask them to report to you who did what and when.3.	ONE-TO-ONE lesson: Explain to your student that you will ask each other questions and write down the answers. If your student has difficulties with vocabulary, be prepared to show/explain/teach a few examples.

When did you last - speaking

These speaking cards enhance conversation on the topic of friendship. Students get the opportunity to discuss what makes a good friend. These cards can be used as ice breakers or as a core activity of the lesson. 

speaking cards- friendship

Student B chooses a path for the dialogue to go and student A must choose the correct responses based on this path.  It is great practice for conversation and speaking and listening.  It is a dialogue and an activity.  

Choose your own adventure dialogue 

A conversational activity which is in fact a mixture of simple prompts that will hopefully spark a nice exchange whenever you have some extra time left or simply want to integrate your students or get to know them better. Easy, smooth and can be inspirational. Good luck! :) 

What do we have in common? - speaking marathon

Reading and speaking worksheet for students to be involved in a customer service scenario. It can be complemented with a transaction process afterwards, or just to practice sharing personal information with a classmate. 

Focused on students who want English for Call centers.

Call center conversation model

Ielts speaking practice with tips on how to answer the questions as well as useful vocabulary and phrases. There is also exercises to help embed new vocabulary. The worksheet is also excellent practice for learners wishing to practice conversation.

IELTS Speaking practice - being famous

This lesson outline is great for a one-hour conversation lesson. It includes a vocabulary list, stimulus, discussion questions and supporting grammar. The worksheet is downloadable in Word so you can edit it to suit your students' needs and level.

Conversation Lesson: The News

In this activity, students create, work at, and shop at a clothing store in the classroom. The activity reinforces clothing vocabulary and conversations at a store between customers and salespeople, and between customers and cashiers. Additional required materials are the clothing items used in the store (a donation bin of used clothing works great), colored pencils/crayons and paper to make sales tags and signs, and speakers for music. The activity is designed for 36 students but can be tailored to your class size. The first three slides are assignment cards. Each student gets one card, assigning them roles as a salesperson, cashier, or customer. While the six sales team set up the clothing store, cashiers and customers cut money and receipts (slides 4 and 5). As long as students understand their roles, the activity basically runs itself.

Classroom Clothing Store

All the directions are on the handout. So, this is a clip of the final scene of the classic Audrey Hepburn film, " Breakfast at Tiffany's". It's great for American casual speech and slang as well as showing emotions because it is a break up scene but also a proposal/ make up scene. This is for upper intermediate to advanced students and is meant for a listening and speaking class. I used it with international students from Japan, and had a long discussion about how we express our emotions beforehand. However, if you want you don't have to do an emotions conversation you can focus on relationship roles in the 1950s and 1960s or you can focus on the cinematography.

Breakfast at Tiffany's Clip Sequencing & Comprehension

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

Articles: Definite or indefinite article (a, an or the)

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

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how to accuse somebody of something in English

how to apologize, say sorry, forgive and express regret in English

how to ask for information and make inquiries in English

how to ask for something, make requests in English

how to blame somebody for something in English

how to defend yourself from criticism in English

how to deny or admit something in English

how to describe things or people in English

how to emphasize important things in English

how to encourage or discourage people in English

how to evaluate people or progress in English

how to express agreement /disagreement in English

how to express approval and disapproval  in English

how to express cause and effect in English

how to express interest in something in English

how to express likelihood, probability in English

how to express likes and dislikes in English

how to express sequence and chronology in English

how to express shock and disbelief in English

how to express sympathy and condolences in English

how to give permission, authorization in English

how to inform somebody about some news in English

how to interpret what was said in English

how to keep a conversation going in English

how to make guesses about something in English

how to make, accept and refuse offers in English

how to order or make a booking in English

how to persuade, convince people in English

how to praise people and express appreciation in English

how to reassure somebody of something in English

how to refuse and object to something in English

how to remind people of something in English

how to rephrase, paraphrase what was said in English

how to say thank you, express gratitude in English

Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Working with Paragraphs: ordering, titling

Role play, miming, drama activity or improv game

Pictionary (picture dictionary) or picture matching

Writing an opinion essay (persuasive essay)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

343 Speaking - conversation English ESL worksheets pdf & doc