5 of the most interesting talking points…

ESL and EFL discussion on what questions lead to great conversations.

  • Level: A2-B1-B2-C1
  • Handout: on TPT for 0.99$$
  • Language focus: questions, preferences, past tense, present tense
  • Media: article

It is no secret that I am a talker. What’s more, I love conversation–I devoted a whole website to it, so that should tell me something right? I genuinely enjoy getting to know people. Their stories, their values, what they like and don’t like, their guilty pleasures. Every time I manage to get to a deeper level in a conversation lesson, I am always, touched, grateful and amazed at the variation on a human theme we have.

What I mean to say is that as humans we share quite a few common elements: we eat, we sleep, we have routines, we have dreams, we have hopes, we have worries, we have doubts, we have projects, we have disappointment and we have pride and we have shame. But it is the stories inside those elements that often testify to the infinite variations these elements have in our lives. They create the stories that are our lives. And by stories, I don’t just mean the play-by-play events all strung together, but the inner dialogue we have with ourselves as our lives play out like movies.

It’s not surprising that when I fell on this article 5 Questions the Most Interesting People Will Always Ask in a Conversation, I ate it up. Thus I am sharing it with you, my teacher community. Not only will it make you reflect on your own approach to prompting conversation, but It may also be a great tool to use with a class. Once for the reading comprehension, and then as a discussion launch pad.

I made a little true/false handout to go with it on Teacher Pay Teachers (0.99$)

What was better then, what is better now?

Do you ever find yourself thinking “things were better in the old days…simpler, less stressful.” Well Coca-Cola knows that you are thinking this and has made a funny ‘then and now’ video depicting the changes in our daily routines.

The video is short and has no dialogue, but I think it might be fun to have students describe the actions in the video. You could even ask them to do in the past and present tenses–for an added language challenge.

Pre discussion

  • Think of your daily routine (work, transportation, what you eat, how you relax), what did we do differently 40 years ago?
  • What was better in the past?
  • What is better now?

The Video: Coca-Cola Advertisement Grandpa-Living a Healthy Lifestyle

Discussion

  • Tell Back all the actions in the advertisement.
  • What are the common elements?
  • What is the advertisement trying to tell us? And do you think they are right?

Let me know how it goes…

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