Free ESL Speaking Activity: Secret Partners

It's no secret that all ESL classes need a wealth of speaking activities to be successful. Whispers will become conversations after just a few minutes of this speaking activity. A speaking activity like this is great for fluency practice and reported speech. If you have a large group with over 20 students, this activity will be one you can use often for ESL speaking practice.

To prepare, I spent some time looking for conversation questions that I thought my students would find interesting. You can find a wealth of questions suitable for ESL speaking activities at Our Chatterbox, a website that uses user submitted questions that are perfect for this type of activity. Some of my students favorites were: What three items would you save if your house was on fire, Would you rather be healthy, wealthy, or wise?, and Would you ever get a tattoo?.

Each student should be assigned one question to ask as many students as possible. To make this go smoother, I assigned each question randomly to a playing card and had students choose a card. Then, I provided a list with each card and its corresponding question. While writing up the list might take some time, this will be a great resource to have on hand when you need a last minute ESL speaking activity but you don't have much time to prepare. Plus you can repeat this activity even after a short time and have a speaking activity that has a longer shelf life than others.

When I made this speaking activity work, I had each of the students write their name on a post it note and then hand it in to me. Even routine activities like this are useful for developing active listening skills which is essential for ESL students. After they handed in their names, I paired up all of the post it notes in a location that the students couldn't see.

At this point, you will want to tell the students that each person in the room has a secret partner. In order to find out whom their partner is, this speaking activity requires them to ask other students their assigned question and take notes on who they asked and what they said. Having each student ask only one question can give them first hand experience in seeing how one good question can lead to a conversation. After they have asked a good percentage of the class, somewhere around 25%, they will need to come up to you and tell you the results of their questions so far.

Then, you will check the post it notes to see if the student found their secret partner. If they did find their partner, be sure to tell them that they have succeeded but don't tell them who their partner is just yet. They should continue to walk around the room speaking to others who ask them the questions that they have been assigned. If they did not find their partner, they will need to ask another good percentage of students their question and report back to you again. Some students will find their partner the first time around but others will work until the end of class to figure it out. Finally, at the end of class once everyone has found their partner, you will want to announce who the secret pairs were.

If you have any time at the end of this speaking activity, be sure to review some of the common mistakes that you overheard and find out some of the most interesting answers from the class.