Forty Ideas for ESL Speakers Corners or English Corners.

Here is an attempt to get hits for blogs from ESL Teachers.

What shall I talk about today in Speaker's Corner? is a question many an ESL or EFL teacher asks him or herself?  Here are some things I have done which have proved quite effective with my students here are at HyLite in Wuxi, China:

• The Jeopardy Quiz game is always popular.
• Tell me about your keys.  Have each student bring out their keys or key chain.  It is an easy way to generate conversation.  You can also learn a lot about each student's personalities.
• Have the student tell you what they see as they go from home to school or work.
• Lying Contest.  Have groups of students make lies.  Choose a student panel of judges to grade each lie on imagination, plausibility and exaggeration.
• If it is a day of unusual weather, talk about it.  A snow day generated a half hour of conversation one time.
• The consequences game.  You can find the game on the Internet.
• The bragging game.  Have student try to top each other's boast.
• Ask students what their word of the year, month and week is.
• Talk about idioms.  If it snows, talk about snow idioms.
• Question period.  Have the students ask you question.  But you must put the question back to the students.
• Talk about teasing.
• Talk about quarreling.
• Talk about everyday things.
• Talk about  something you saw in the street.
• On this day in history.
• Top ten lists.
• Reverse role role plays.  Men play women, students play teachers in everyday situations.
• Have students act the famous Stella! scene from A Streetcar named Desire.
• Press conferences or question periods.  Students ask the questions.  A few students can be the interviewees.  Students can pretend they are someone else.  I had men being women in a press conference role play.  The questions asked were funny.
• Have the students tell you something you may not know about their country.
• Drawing shapes.  Have students give oral instructions to other student to draw shapes on paper.  After, they compare results.  Is this what you wanted me to draw?
• One word at a time sentence.  Students, one after another, add a word to a sentence.
• Talk about local, national and international news that might interest the students.
• Childhood memories.
• The Hokey Pokey Song.  It is even fun to do with adults.
• Mock Elections.
• Speaking contests with students as judges.
• Who are these Chinese people.  Go the Internet and find lists of important Chinese people.
• They show what they  have in their wallets or purses.
• Show them your photo album.
• Show the students old photos of yourself.
• Choose nicknames for a sports team coming from your town.
• Talk about traffic and near-accidents the students or you might have been in.
• Ask the students if any of them have almost been killed.
• Best school time memories.  Worst school time memories.
• Take newspaper headlines.  Have students guess what the details of the story are.
• Have you ever........?
• Yiddish.  Yes!  Talk about Yiddish words that have entered the English language.
• What happens when we die?  What do you want heaven to be like?
• Survivor.  Each student is given a role to play.  The watching students can vote the students off the stage.