8 Printable Autumn Speaking Cards for Adult ESL Classes (Free PDF)

We made these eight cards so your autumn lessons have something good to open with. They are seasonal, they print one to a page, and they are built so students keep talking past the first sentence.

Every card has a device that stops the answer being one line. A follow-up question the partner has to ask. A reason the partner has to judge. A point only the better argument wins. A constraint that means you cannot both get what you want. Something always happens after the answer, so there is always a reason to keep going.

Each card also prints the phrases students need to do what it asks. Most speaking material scaffolds the question carefully and leaves the answer bare, which is the wrong way round. A student who knows what they want to say and cannot reach the words for it will say something shorter instead, every time.

A2 to B2, five to fifteen minutes each, and they run with one student or a full class.

1. Autumn Vibes Speaking Cards

A2 to B1pairs or small groups10 minutesCard 1 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Eight questions about the season, taken one at a time. After a student answers, their partner has to ask a follow-up before the next card comes out. What changes in your home when autumn arrives? is the flavour of them, concrete enough that an A2 student can start straight away.

Hand over the next card only once you have heard a follow-up question. It sounds fussy and it is the whole activity. After one round students do it without being policed.

The problem you will hit is that asking is harder than answering, so the stronger student in a pair ends up asking every time. Head it off by pre-teaching three frames and assigning them: Why is that? Has it always been like that? What about last year? At A2, let students reuse the same frame all the way through. At B1, ban repeats, which is where it starts being work.

Teaching one to one, take a card yourself each round. Answering your own prompts gives your student a model and stops the lesson feeling like an interview.

The best opener of the eight for the first autumn lesson of term, because nothing on it assumes students already know each other.

2. This or That: Autumn Edition

A2 to B1pairs5 to 10 minutesCard 2 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Five forced choices, and where the pair disagrees, the better reason takes the point. Soup you made or soup from the shop is the kind of thing it asks.

Ask an A2 student which they prefer and you will get it depends, a dead end they can reach in two words. A binary takes that escape route away. They have to commit first, and the reason becomes the only place for the language to go.

The tip that makes or breaks it: both students mark all five privately before either of them speaks. Compare as you go and the second student accommodates the first, so you get agreement instead of argument. Mark first, compare after, and you get five real disagreements.

A pair that still converges on everything has nothing left to do. Say in advance that agreeing scores nothing, and if it keeps happening, tell one of them to argue the side they did not choose. Defending a position you do not hold is harder language than stating one you do.

Cards one and two print back to back and cover your first ten minutes at A2. Both are in the free download at the end of this article.

3. Six Unfinished Sentences

B1 to B2pairs5 minutesCard 3 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Six stems finished out loud, with the same follow-up rule as card one. I used to ... in autumn, but now I ... is one of them.

What it is really doing is grammar. The six stems are graded by structure rather than topic, and between them they force past simple, present habit, second conditional, used to and a future perfect. Students produce five structures in five minutes without being told that is the exercise, which is why it survives as a warm-up instead of feeling like a grammar drill in fancy dress.

Run it in the first week of a course and write down which of the five breaks. What a student manages on a worksheet and what they produce under time pressure are different things, and this shows you the gap faster than a placement test will.

Do not correct during the run. Note two errors, deal with them once all six stems are done, and leave the run itself alone. Correcting mid-stem teaches students to stop and check, which is the opposite of the point.

4. Take a Candle You Need Today

B1 to B2pairs10 minutesCard 4 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Six candles, each described by what it is for rather than what it smells like. Students pick the one that matches their week and say what happened to make them choose it. The partner then decides whether the reason is good enough.

None of the six options is literally about candles. Each one names a state, and the student has to work backwards to the week behind it. That reverse move is a real jump in abstraction, and it is the one card here that will not survive below B1. Do not try it at A2 with a dictionary open.

The verdict is the engine. Teachers drop it because it looks like decoration. If nobody has to judge the reason, students give one line and stop. Make sure the verdict is said out loud, in words, not as a nod.

When a reason comes out thin, ask which candle they nearly chose. The near miss almost always produces more language than the choice did, because comparing two options forces a student to name what separates them. The phrase bank on the card gives them the wording for exactly that.

The full six, and the phrase bank, are on the card in the PDF at the bottom of this page.

5. Talk for a Minute

B1 to B2pairs10 minutesCard 5 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Nine prompts, one minute of continuous speech each, and the partner times it and counts how many times the speaker stops. What is in your bag now that was not there in July? is the register.

Counting rather than correcting is deliberate. Fluency and accuracy compete for the same attention, and a student corrected mid-minute will stop more, not less. So the partner counts and says nothing. What that gives the student is a number, and a number can improve inside one lesson, which is unusual in a speaking class.

Run the same prompt twice and have them write both counts down. The second minute is always better than the first. This is the card to reach for when a student tells you their speaking is not improving, because it puts evidence in front of them in ten minutes.

At B1, use forty seconds. A full minute of unbroken speech is longer than it sounds, and a student who fails it badly first time will not want the second run.

All nine prompts are on the card. The free PDF is at the end of this article.

6. Take a Drink You Need This Autumn

A2 to B1pairs5 to 10 minutesCard 6 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Six drinks, each tied to a moment rather than a taste. It runs in two halves. Students choose the one they need this week and say why, then choose one for their partner and find out whether the partner agrees.

The second half is the activity. Choosing for another person means making a claim about them, which is a different language set from talking about yourself and is close to absent from A2 coursebooks. It also gives students a reason to listen, since you cannot pick for your partner unless you heard the first half.

Do half one around the whole group before anyone starts half two. They need something to go on, and being wrong is the interesting outcome here rather than a failure.

This card has no phrase bank printed on it, so put four frames on the board before you start: I think you need ... because ... You look like you have had ... I would have said ..., but I was wrong. Actually, that is not far off.

Run Autumn Vibes first and this second. The claims students make about each other will be sharper for it.

Print them together. Both are in the free download below.

7. Five Things People Say in October

B1 to B2pairs10 minutesCard 7 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Five opinions about the season, rated one to ten. Students then rate where they think their partner sat, compare, and open the discussion on whichever one they got most wrong. The year really starts in September, not January is one of the five.

The prediction is not decoration. Left alone, a pair works down a list in order and burns most of its energy on the first item, which is rarely the most interesting one. Sorting by size of disagreement puts the real argument first, and every pair in the room starts somewhere different, so the class stops sounding rehearsed.

No talking while marking. Any discussion before both sets of marks are down kills the prediction and the activity with it. Say it twice.

If you have time left, ask students to rewrite one statement so they would score it a ten. Rewriting a claim until you agree with it is precise work. They have to find the exact word that was wrong, and that is hard to set any other way.

This is also one of the few here that works properly one to one, because your ratings are as unknown to your student as another student's would be.

The five statements and the rating lines are on the card in the PDF at the end of this post.

8. One Day, Two People

A2 to B2pairs15 minutesCard 8 of 8. Every card prints one to a page, with its phrase bank.Download the free PDF

Sixteen options across morning, afternoon, evening and night. The pair is spending the day together and has to agree on one option per part of the day, with a single constraint: they may not both have their first choice in any row.

Without that constraint, pairs converge in about ninety seconds, because agreeing is faster and easier than arguing. Making concession compulsory is what turns it into a negotiation, so you get trading language rather than preference language.

Mark first choices privately, reveal, then negotiate all four parts of the day at once instead of working through them in order. Trading across rows is where the real conversation lives. You take the morning, I will take the night. Run it row by row and you lose that completely.

Every option is illustrated, so it works at A2 with a student who could not hold this conversation unsupported, while the negotiation itself stretches to B2. Useful for a mixed level pair, which is otherwise awkward to plan for.

When the day is agreed, have them tell it as a story in the past, as though it happened. Fifteen minutes of negotiation becomes a narrative with no new input from you.

When you have more time: autumn lessons and worksheets

When you want the full hour, these autumn lessons are already planned.

• Autumn Vocabulary (A1 to A2, free). The season's words taught as phrases rather than a list, because a list of nouns is not something a student can use. Free, no subscription needed.
• Unpopular Autumn Opinions (A2 to B1). The full length partner to card seven. Students argue positions about the season and pick up the language of disagreeing without falling out.
• Autumn Idioms (A2 to B1). A speaking lesson on the expressions English reaches for in October, with practice that puts each one inside a situation.
• October Blues (B1 to B2). A reading lesson on why the season flattens people, and what one Norwegian town did about it. The natural hour to follow card four.
• Living Seasonally (B2 to C1). A reading lesson on slow living, for your strongest group.
• Changing Seasons. The connected autumn lessons in one set, if you would rather teach the season as a unit than pick from it.

If you want activities with nothing to print at all, Point at the Weather is the companion to this post. Ten autumn activities that run straight off the board.