Conversation Games

Think of a person, place or thing. E.g. David Beckham. Barcelona. Tree. 

The other person will ask you questions about this. E.g. Is it an animal? Is it big? Does it live in Africa? 

You can only answer yes or no to these questions. E.g. Is it an animal? Yes. Is it big? Yes. Does it live in Africa? Yes. 

Continue to ask questions until you find out the answer. 

To make it easier/more difficult, limit yourself to categories. E.g. Animals, Football teams, Celebrities. 

Choose a random word (e.g. Apple). 

Take the last letter of the world, and begin a new word using this letter (e.g. E - Elephant). 

Continue until you can't think of another word (e.g. Apple - Elephant - Tomato - Orangutan - New - Water). 

To make it more difficult, choose a category of words (e.g. food, animals, verbs, adjectives).

Find a picture. E.g. A man playing football. 

Describe what you see in the picture. E.g. There is a man playing football. 

To make it easier/more difficult, describe the picture using different senses. E.g. You can hear the crowd cheering. You can smell the grass. 

You can also use pictures to practise different grammar topics. 

1. E.g. If I were a footballer, I would play for Real Madrid (Second Conditional). 

2. E.g. I have never played football (Present Perfect Simple). 

3. E.g. He is playing football / He is dribbling with the ball / He is trying to score a goal (Present Continuous). 

Start a story with one sentence (e.g. I was walking down the street). 

The next person continues the story using the words "fortunately/unfortunately" (e.g. unfortunately it was raining). 

The next person continues the story using the other word (e.g. fortunately I had an umbrella). 

Continue until you can't think of anything else to say. 

Person A thinks of a sentence in their head. 

Person A says the first one of the sentence (e.g. The).

Person B has to think of a possible sentence (e.g. The weather was amazing).

Person A says the next word (e.g. The dog). 

Person B has to think of a possible sentence (e.g. The dog was eating a bone). 

Continue until the sentence is complete. 

Choose a word (e.g. Japan).

The next person has to think of a world which links to this word (e.g. sushi). 

This person then explains why these words are linked (e.g. Sushi is a popular food from Japan). 

Continue until you can't think of another word (e.g. Pizza - Sushi is a popular food from Japan, and pizza is a popular food from Italy). 

Remember - the goal of this game is to speak, there are no wrong answers. 

Similar to "Link the words"

Take three words (e.g. the UK, France, Japan).

Now discuss which is the "odd one out" (e.g. France is the odd one out because it is not an island. e.g Japan is the odd one out because it's not in Europe). 

Remember - the goal of this game is to speak, there are no wrong answers). 

Choose a random object, it doesn't have to be real (e.g. chicken light). 

You can use random word generator websites to help you. 

One student has to talk about why you should buy this product. 

You can change how long the student needs to speak for (e.g. 30 seconds, one minute). 

Person A says something that they bought at the supermarket (e.g. I bought an apple).

Person B continues the shopping list (e.g. I bought an apple and a can of soup). 

Person A continues (e.g. I bought an apple, a can of soup and a loaf of bread). 

Continue until someone can't remember. 

To make it more difficult, change the category of the "shopping list" (e.g. sports, countries, clothes). 

To make it more difficult, change the tense (e.g. I will buy ... , I was looking for ... , Every week I buy ...) 

Say a sentence to begin a story. (E.g. Once upon a time, there was a boy called John).

Your partner then continues the story (E.g. John had a magical donkey). 

Continue until you can't do it any more. 

To make it easier, use pictures to help give you more imagination. 

To make it more difficult, only use conditionals or more difficult tenses. 

Write three "truths" about yourself and present them to your conversation partner. (E.g. Pizza is my favourite food, I have three sisters, Spain is my favourite country). 

Your partner asks you questions about these truths. (E.g. What type of pizza is your favourite? How old are your sisters/how old are they? Why is Spain your favourite country?)

After questioning, your partner decides which one is the lie and why it is the lie. (E.g. You don't have three sisters because you can't remember their names). 

To make it more difficult, add a category, tense or conditional to your truths. (E.g. If I won the lottery, I would go to Japan. The best steak I have ever eaten was in Amsterdam. McDonald's is my favourite fast food restaurant). 

Choose a random word (e.g. alligator).

This word is the answer. Now think of questions to this answer. (E.g. What animal is similar to crocodiles? What animal lives in rivers and swamps?)

To make it more difficult, use conditional tenses in your questions. (E.g. If you couldn't have a crocodile as a pet, what animal would you have as a pet?)