EXTRA SPEAKING

ACTIVITIES

1. Make me say “Yes, I do” (OR Make me say “Yes, I am” depends on
what you are teaching, Present Simple or Verb To Be)

Students ask the teacher and then each other “Do you…?” questions
and get one point for each positive answer but no points for “No, I
don’t”. You may also want to allow questions with the Present Simple
of “to be”. This is more fun if students work out that they can get
points for asking really obvious questions like “Do you eat every
day?” and “Do you sleep at night?” You can also get students to ask
about their partners’ family members etc. to bring in 3rd person S.

Make Me Say No I Don’t below is a variation on this game.

2. Make me say “No, I don’t.”

Students ask, “Do you…?” questions and get one point for “No, I
don’t” answers but no points for “Yes, I do” answers, plus maybe the
same for “Are you + noun/ adjective?” Crazy questions like “Do you
have an elephant?” and “Do you eat spiders for breakfast” are
allowed (and in fact the main attraction of this game). The same
game can be played with third person S by letting them ask about
friends, neighbors, etc. too.

3. How often? And when?

Students ask each other questions to find things that they do more
often or earlier than their partner with “How often…?” and “When…?”
questions, with one point for each thing that they can find. For
example, if one person answers “Five o’clock” to “When do you get
up?” or “Every day” to “How often do you go swimming?”, they will
probably get the point. The person in each group who finds more
things that they do more often and/ or when wins. They can also do
the game based on their family, e.g. comparing dads, to include 3rd
person S. REMEMBER STUDENTS MUST GIVE FULL ANSWERS TO
PRACTICE THE STRUCTURE.

4. Present Simple things in common

Students ask Present Simple questions to find things that are true for
both/ all the people in their group such as “What’s your favorite
fruit?” and “Do you watch TV every day?”, counting the things in
common that they find. The team who has the most (approx. 10)
things in common report back to the class with sentences like “We eat
toast for breakfast”, with the other groups allowed to object to
grammar mistakes, things that aren’t true, two statements which are
basically the same, or the group not reaching the number of
statements that they claimed. REMEMBER STUDENTS MUST GIVE
FULL ANSWERS TO PRACTICE THE STRUCTURE.

5. I don’t know if he does

Students try to ask Present Simple questions that the person

answering doesn’t know the answer to, to get the answer “I don’t
know”. These can be general questions like “How often do people in
this city take a bus?” and “Does the President like cheese?”, but the
game works best if the questioners must think of more personal
questions that the person answering doesn’t know the answer to. For
example, you can limit the questions to ones about the person
answering, their classmates and/ or their family like “How many books
do you have?”, “How many cups of coffee does your dad drink every
day?”, “What color bicycle does your grandmother have?” and “Does
Jorge live near here?” REMEMBER STUDENTS MUST GIVE FULL
ANSWERS TO PRACTICE THE STRUCTURE.

6. ‘Only I do’ mingling game

Each student tries to think of a question to which everyone else’s
answer will be “No, I don’t” but to which they themselves can answer
“Yes, I do”, e.g. “Do you live with your uncle?” or “Do you have 100
dogs?” Everyone stands up and all the students go around asking
their question until they have got a “No, I don’t” from everyone else
in the class or someone else says “Yes, I do” (in which case they
should think of another question and start again).

When at least three or four things that are only true about one person
seem to have been found, sit everyone down and ask them to share
those things.

7. Adverbs of frequency ladder game

Draw a ladder on the board with a frequency expression on each rung

in order of frequency, e.g. “never”, “hardly ever” etc. To climb to the
top of the ladder, students must ask questions to get those answers
in exactly the order given. If they get a different answer they fall to
the bottom of the ladder and must start again. However, they can ask
the same questions when they try again if they can remember them.

Students can then draw their own ladders in their notebooks and play
the same game in groups. REMEMBER STUDENTS MUST GIVE FULL
ANSWERS TO PRACTICE THE STRUCTURE.

8. Present Simple discuss and agree

Students try to make Present Simple statements that everyone in

their group agrees with, e.g. “Teenagers spend too much time
texting” or “Old people complain too much”. They can be given
language that they must use and/ or the topics that they must
discuss, on the board or as worksheets.

As well as trying to make statements of fact like those examples,

students can try to agree on good routines, e.g. for a perfect
language learner, the perfect spouse, the perfect teacher, the perfect
school timetable. They can then compare with another group, read
out their answers until the other groups guess what kind of perfect
person they are describing, or vote on other teams’ ideas to choose
the best one.

9. Present Simple bluff

One student makes a true or false statement about their routines or

those of people they know such as family members and people in
their neighborhood. Perhaps after answering questions like “How
often…?” and “Why do/ does…?”, the other people guess if the
statement was true or not. They can continue to lie (hopefully
convincingly) during the questioning stage.

10. You say and I draw

Draw a stick man and stick woman on the board or a large piece of
paper. Students say sentences like “She has long hair”, “He is tall”,
and the teacher draws those things on top of the stick figures.
Students will probably need a list of Present Simple verbs which can
be easily drawn such as “want” (with a thought bubble) and “lives in”
to help them come up with ideas. After some practice, students can
play the same game in groups of two or three with one person
drawing and the others saying what should be drawn.

You can also add the routines meaning of Present Simple by drawing a
line representing 24 hours across the board and drawing things along
it for each of the stick men to show what they do every day.

11. How many people do?

Students guess how many people in the room do certain things with
sentences such as “I think four people drink tea with milk”. They then
make a question to check their answers (“How many people here
drink tea with milk?” or “Put up your hand if you…”), with one point
for each statement that is factually and grammatically correct. A good
way to set this up is to get the teams to write down one statement for
each number of people in the class, e.g. starting at “One person lives
near here” and going up one by one until they get to “Fourteen
people read a newspaper every week”.

12. Present Simple presentations

Although you can’t give a business or academic presentation just with

Present Simple, it is perfectly possible to design extended speaking
tasks with just this tense. Students can speak for one or two minutes
about their morning routines, work routines, weekly routines, etc. It’s
probably best to give students at least one minute to think about
what they are going to say, perhaps making notes (but not full
sentences) to help them while they are speaking.

Possible topics and tasks for people listening can be given on a

worksheet, written on the board, or just explained orally.

13. Guess when the routine action happens

One student asks a question that the people answering don’t know
the answer to but can make some kind of guess about like “When do I
brush my teeth?” or “When does my father get home?” Another
student should answer in a full sentence like “You wash your face at
6:20”. If their guess is wrong, they follow hints like “No, I wash my
face at…

14. Present Simple chain statements (MEMORY)

Students sit in a circle. The first student says something true about
themselves such as “I jog three times a week”, perhaps using one of
the phrases written on the board. The next person repeats that
person’s statement in the second person, e.g. “You jog three times a
week”, then adds their own true statement such as “I have four
sisters”. The next person does the same, but this time adding third
person for all but the last person to speak, e.g. “You have four sisters.
She jogs three times a week. I fight with my brother.” The previous
person to speak should correct them if they are wrong.

15. Guess the person from the routines

One person gives hints like “This person gets up at 4:30 in the
morning”, “This person often wears boots” and “This person likes
animals” one by one until the people listening guess who is being
spoken about (a farmer in this case). They can describe people they
know (grandfather etc.), people with particular jobs, or particular
nationalities. Classes with more imagination can also do it with a page
or magazine full of pictures of people, using their imaginations to
come up with sentences like “This person lives in California” and “This
person is married” until someone guesses which picture they are
speaking about. Students will probably need some help such as
suggestions for verbs they can use.

16. Guess the action

One student picks an action and gives clues like “I do it at 7:15 on

Mondays”, “I do it at 10 o’clock on Sundays” until their partner
guesses what the action is (“get up” in this example).

17. Guess when it happens

One student chooses a time, day, date, month, season etc. and gives
true sentences about what people do at that time (e.g. “My family eat
chicken” and “Americans eat turkey”) until their partner guesses what
time they are speaking about (“on Xmas Day” for this example). They
can describe the habits of people they know, people in their country,
people in other countries, or groups of people like old people. They’ll
probably need a list of possible times to talk about, perhaps with
prepositions included if you want to practice that.

18. Strange Present Simple questions

Ask students to imagine they are having a conversation with a
stranger or acquaintance and to use “(Wh) do you…?” questions to
make conversation. They get one point for each good conversational
question they can come up with, but their partner can object if they
think the question isn’t suitable in some way, e.g. if they ask a very
personal question like “How often do you go to hospital?” or one
which is impossible to answer like “How many photos are on your
computer?” They can then brainstorm suitable, unsuitable and
possibly suitable questions for this kind of situation into three
columns, possibly including other tenses at this stage if you are ready
to move onto new grammar.

19. The whole routine ladder game

Students try to guess the whole of a particular routine of someone all

the way through without missing any stages, e.g. “First you wake up”,
“Then you turn off your alarm clock”, “After that, you kick off the
sheets”, etc. If they mess up the order or miss a stage, they have to
go right back to the beginning and try again. This continues until they
successfully reach a certain number of steps that you told them, e.g.
ten or fifteen. To help them picture the game more clearly, you can
draw a ladder with that many steps, explaining that if you slip on a
ladder, you always fall back down to the bottom and have to start
again.

20. I don’t want to answer that

Students use Present Simple and maybe a list of topics written on the
board or a worksheet to try to make their partner say something
meaning “I’m sorry, that’s too personal”/ “I’m sorry, I’d rather not
answer that” with questions like “Do you spit in the street?” and “Do
you think (name of student) is beautiful?”, with one point for each
time their partner won’t answer the question.

21. Present Simple stations

Students indicate if they think the time expression they hear should
take “at”, “in” or “on” by running to the part of the room with that
written on it, e.g. running and touching the right-hand wall when they
hear “three o’clock in the morning”, running and touching the left-
hand wall when they hear “my birthday” and standing in the middle
of the room when they hear “winter”. Students who are last to arrive
at the right place or who move away from the place where they are
even when the preposition should be the same as the last one are
eliminated. The last person left is the winner.

22. Raise the Present Simple

Students listen to time expressions like “Saturday evening”, “midday”

and “the evening” and indicate if they think the appropriate
preposition is “at”, “in” or “on” by raising their right hand for “at”,
raising their left hand for “on” and standing up (and therefore raising
their head) for “in”. Students could also be given a card to hold in
each hand and maybe a sticker, headband or paper hat on their head,
with the prepositions written on them to help students remember
which action is which preposition.

23. Good boy/ good boy boasting

Students take turns boasting to show how hardworking, lucky,

popular, helpful, environmentally friendly etc. they are with sentences
like “I get up at 5 o’clock every morning” until one person gives up or
repeats the same thing as their partner said. They should be
encouraged to over-exaggerate or even lie! It’s probably best to have
a few different subjects available for them to boast about, with
students boasting about one topic until someone wins, then switching
to another and doing the same.

24. What do I do? bluffing game

Students work in pairs or in groups of three to write find out some

things that they have in common and some things which are only true
about one of them. They write some of these down, leaving out the
subjects (i.e. not including names, “I”, etc.) as in “works on Sundays”.

They exchange what they have written with another group, then
someone from that groups turns one of those statements into a
question, e.g. “What time do you go to bed?” Everyone in the other
group should answer with the information that they wrote, i.e. the
same answer as each other. After asking for more details (e.g. “Why
do you go to bed so early?”), the questioners guess who the info is
true about, i.e. guess who (if anyone) is lying.

25. Good and bad routines Q&A

Students ask each other questions like “Do you watch TV when you do
your homework?” to find out who is a better student, busier, more of
a TV addict, etc.

26. Present Simple stand in line

Students are split into two or more teams with at least five people in
each team. The teacher asks them a question and they must ask each
other the same question (in English) to stand in order by what their
answers are, e.g. the person who gets up earliest at one end of their
line and the person who gets up latest at the other end, or the person
who does something most often at one end of the line and the person
who does the same thing least often at the other end.

27. Routines negotiations

Ask students to imagine that they will need to have exactly the same
routine for a while, for example because they will share a room while
studying abroad together. They should describe their routines to each
other and try to find compromises when they are different from each
other, e.g. agreeing that their bedtime will be 22:30 if one of them
likes going to bed early and the other usually stays up late.