
Duration: 10 minutes
Type: Rotating Partners
- This is an activity Larry Ferlazzo recommends. You can read more about how he suggests using this activity in his book The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide.
- After practicing any particular conversation topic with your students, you can use this fun activity to help make the students more fluent with the conversation.
- Put students in two parallel lines or in inner and outer circles, some call this Conga Lines or Speed Dating Circles.
- Students have 3 minutes to have a conversation with the person across from them. If you have been practicing the conversation as a group already, then students should be able to have the conversation with minimal help.
- Then one line or one circle rotates while the other line or circle stays still. That way everyone has a new partner.
- Now students have 2 minutes to have the same conversation.
- Repeat with giving the students only 1 minute to have the same conversation.
Benefits:
- This activity requires no preparation.
- Students get really familiar with a particular conversation topic so that they can have it more naturally and are less likely to forget.
- Everyone student is required to speak so that everyone gets lots of practice.
Have you tried this activity? How did it go? Leave your comments below!