ENG

Let me begin by saying, these tips on how to use conversation questions in the classroom are based on what I have found to work in my classes. You may have to tweak or disregard some of my advice to accommodate your own teaching style. With that in mind, let’s get started.

First, let’s talk about how much time to allocate for questions. When planning lessons, I most often follow a rough rule of a minimum of one minute per question and a maximum of three minutes per question. That doesn’t really indicate how much time they will spend on each individual question; it’s just a rough estimate for judging the amount of time it will take to finish a set of questions.

So, if you give your students ten questions, you’ll burn between ten to thirty minutes of class time. Now of course this isn’t a steadfast rule. There will always be exceptions. All things considered though, about twenty minutes for ten questions is the average for my classes.

Another quick point, if you can limit how many questions they see at a time (using PowerPoint or spaced handouts) they will answer questions more fully and take more time. I find showing them five questions at a time makes for a good pace.

Next, you need to decide how many students to put into each group. As a general rule of thumb I find that three students in a group is the ideal number. I say this because with three students everyone gets a good chance to talk, but there are still enough people to have a rich reservoir of ideas to discuss.

Two students really maximize talking time, but often the two students don’t get along or you might have two shy students that end up together.

Four students can work, but often there isn’t enough talk time for each student and shy students feel like they are on stage every time they talk.

Five students in a group are far too many and often they just won’t talk. All this being said, ultimately it comes down to the dynamics of your class and its size .

If you have a really talkative class with a good dynamic, putting them in pairs works well. Groups of four generally work best with groups of shy students, because they feel more pressure to speak if everyone in the group is silent.

Assure your students that mistakes are okay. If they aren’t making mistakes, they aren’t trying hard enough. Tell them that you are happy when they make mistakes because that means they are trying new and difficult ways of saying things. If they don’t make any mistakes then they haven’t learned anything.

One thing to stress is that they shouldn’t be speaking their native language. It is better to say something that is incorrect or unclear in English than correctly and clearly in their first language.

Another important point to stress is that they are free to discuss more than just the questions. In a natural conversation the topic moves from one subject to another; this is what you want in your classes as well. Very often students will treat questions like an ordered set of goals to accomplish. Let them know if they don’t discuss them all, that’s okay!

If they spend the whole time talking about just one question, that is great. It means they are having a natural conversation. Just make sure they are speaking only in English! I tell my students that they can discuss whatever questions they think are interesting. If they don’t think any questions are interesting, they should make their own questions.

I let them know that I don’t care what they talk about, as long as they speak in English. Now that isn’t totally true, I do care about what they talk about, and I target my questions to accomplish certain goals in the class. But I want them to feel free enough to branch off into a natural conversation. I would say 99% of the time they just use the questions that I give them. How about the other 1%? Well at least they are speaking English, and they usually get to the questions eventually.

After you have put the students into groups and they are talking, there is one important point to remember. Stay out of the discussion! I know it may be tempting to make a comment, but this is their time to discuss.

The only time you should be interrupting their discussion is when they ask you for help. Sometimes you can interject with a vocabulary word if they are searching for the perfect word or if they are using a vocabulary word incorrectly over and over again. Otherwise, stay out of the discussion. So what are you doing while they are discussing? You are monitoring each group’s discussion and taking notes.

While you are monitoring your students’ discussions, you should be taking notes. Take note of any errors that are being made repeatedly (i.e., errors in grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary use). Write down some specific sentences that contain common errors you hear or that contain errors you wish to work on.

Decide which errors or mistakes would be useful to go over with the class and at the end of class or at the end of the discussion, go over some of these mistakes and errors. When you go over the errors, keep them anonymous and let students know that it’s a good thing if they see their mistake on the board. You might let the class try to correct the errors or correct them yourself for the class depending on how much time you have.

So, those are the tips I have for using conversation questions in an adult ESL class. You may find that these tips don’t suit your teaching style. Give them a try and if they don’t mesh with your teaching style, try something different. Every teacher teaches differently and every student learns differently. Ultimately the goal is to find what works best for you and your class.