Oral English classes can be challenging for some newer English learners. A lot of the time, students will learn how to read, write, and use grammar correctly but may skip on the speaking and listening.

Here are some ideas to interact through speech with new English learners:

Create a New Game

Ask your students to show some creativity and create a new game to teach you! This could be a unit on games around the world or you could introduce some of your favorite games and hobbies. Maybe you could try telling them simple present sentence structures using verbs or teach them a game that they might not know by giving them instructions and then playing outside.

The possibilities for this are endless.

Sell Something

Some students might have a goal to open a store or sell something online. If they don’t, they might have to ‘sell themselves’ in an interview someday in the future. Teach them an order to sell something!

Make a call to action and ask them why their product is the best (who says), why do I want it, and how do I buy it? They can create a skit, auction, or role play vendors. You could even hold interviews for your students or give them a magic new product they have to sell to you.

Plan a Trip

Do a unit on hopes and dreams, what do your students want to do in the future before they can’t any longer, (think bucket list). Find out or have the students pick a place they would like to visit. As a group or individually, have the students plan a 5-day trip to the chosen destination. This can be a great introduction to the future tense sentence structure.

How much will their flight cost? Where will they stay? Where and what will they eat? What will they see? What will they purchase? Will they visit anybody?

Introduce your Family

As an ice-breaker lesson, when you are introducing yourself, it’s also a fun project to get the students to introduce their family. Have your students put together a powerpoint presentation or photo album of their family to introduce them to you.

Have them show you where they live, a typical day in their city, what their family does, where do they go, what do they eat, and what do they do when they are together? Do they celebrate any holidays together?

This is a great lesson for the present tense to be verb sentence structure as well as has/have and do/does. Get them to describe what their family looks like, what they do, what their city looks like, and what their food tastes like!

Debate

One of the more entertaining lessons can be a debate between classmates. Introduce some controversial topics to your class and ask them for their opinions. Put some ideas on the board, break the class into groups, and have them choose a for or against side on a topic.

Have them debate in front of the class and have the class choose a winning side! Review the present continuous tense for this lesson—what is the topic doing that you are for or against?

Speech can be an entertaining, fun, and useful integration into English lessons. It is interactive, challenging, and very much needed to round out a language lesson. Hopefully, you can integrate some of these fun ideas into your lessons!