ESL Speaking Lessons and Activities for Adults, A1 to C1 - Page 14

What is inside the ESL speaking lesson library

A speaking lesson here is not a topic and a list of prompts. It teaches the phrases the conversation needs first, then puts students somewhere they have to use them. That is the difference between a class that talks and a class where the same two confident students talk.

The section holds two kinds of plan:

Speaking lessons, each built around one situation such as asking for a raise, making a complaint, describing a car breakdown or reacting to a backhanded compliment. Each teaches the functional language for that situation, then ends in a task that needs it, with the ESL discussion questions for that task written into the plan.
Speaking Club plans, written for groups where the point is talk time rather than new grammar. These assume several students and a teacher who steers rather than presents.

Both come with teacher notes on where a group stalls and a Quizlet set for the vocabulary, so the phrases come back the following week. The conversation topics run through work, technology, travel, relationships, psychology and the 21st century dilemmas category, which is where the lessons adults actually want to argue about tend to live.

What a speaking lesson looks like in practice

Talk time is not the same as teaching speaking. An hour of open discussion produces fluent repetition of what students could already say, which is why a class can feel busy and go nowhere. The plans here split the hour deliberately, and the input comes first.

Lead-in. Two questions on the situation, answered from what students already have, so you hear the gap before you start filling it.
Input, around thirty minutes. This is the half most question lists skip. You present the models, the vocabulary and the functional language, and check that students can hear the difference between a polite refusal and a blunt one.
Speaking task, most of what is left. A role play, a debate or a retelling where the language from the input stage is the only way to finish. Students work in pairs first, then to the room.
Feedback, five to seven minutes. Take the errors you noted during the task and deal with them at the end. This stage gets cut when a lesson overruns, and cutting it is what makes the same mistake reappear next week.

The shape holds at every level. What changes is how long the input stage needs and how much of the target language stays visible on the board while students speak.

ESL speaking lessons by level

Level decides how much a speaking task can carry before it collapses. Give an A1-A2 student an open question and they will translate it in their head and then say nothing. Give a B2-C1 student a closed one and they will answer in four words and wait. The lessons are banded so the task matches what a student can hold, and the ESL conversation questions inside each one are pitched to the band rather than dropped in from a general list.

A1-A2	Short exchanges on concrete situations, with the phrases on the board throughout. Students speak in pairs with a model to copy and you take one of the roles. A task at this band sounds like describing a normal Monday at work.
A2-B1	Longer turns, and the first opinions with a reason attached. A role play works if students know what they want before they start. The same theme becomes whether working from home beats going to an office, and why.
B1-B2	Fluency work. Discussion, debate and ranking tasks, with accuracy corrected afterwards rather than during, so the flow survives. Students can weigh a trade-off, such as a four-day week for less money, and defend the answer.
B2-C1	Register and nuance. Hedging, disagreeing politely, distancing yourself from a claim. The task is usually to hold a position under pressure without sounding rude, on something abstract enough to have no clean answer.

If you do not know where a new student sits, the placement test gives you a CEFR band in about fifteen minutes and saves you a lesson of guessing. When a student sits between two bands, take the lower one, because a speaking task pitched too high produces silence rather than effort.

ESL warm up activities for the first five minutes

Students arrive from a commute or the end of a shift, and neither leaves anyone keen to debate artificial intelligence. These ESL warm up activities exist to get the first English sentence out of everyone in the room, which is most of the work. Each takes five minutes, and each can grow into the main task if it goes well.

Two truths and a lie about your week. Everyone writes three short statements and the group guesses. It becomes a discussion the moment you ask why the lie was believable.
Word chain on the day's situation. Each person adds a related word and explains the link in one sentence. The words they reach for tell you which vocabulary the input stage actually needs.
The one-minute answer. One question, and every student speaks for sixty seconds without stopping. Fluency work disguised as an icebreaker, and it makes the silence later feel short.
Odd one out. Three things on the board and the group decides which does not belong. There is no right answer, so the whole task is justification.
Headline reaction. Show one headline with no article attached and ask what the group thinks happened. Predicting is easier than explaining, so the quiet students start talking first.

ESL speaking activities and games for adults

A question gives you a conversation. A format gives students a reason to keep going after the obvious answer has been said. The lessons themselves are built on role play, debate and storytelling. The rest below are ESL speaking activities worth keeping ready for the moment a discussion needs restarting, and all of them work in a group or one to one if you take a role yourself.

Role play. Give each person a situation and something they want, not a script. A tenant and a landlord who both have a fair case produce far more language than a shop assistant and a customer who agree.
Debates. Assign the position rather than letting people choose it. Defending an opinion you do not hold forces students out of the phrases they already own.
Ranking tasks. Six items, one list, and the pair has to agree an order. The disagreement is the lesson and the agreement is the deadline.
Storytelling. One student tells a short story and the next retells it with a detail changed, and the group finds the change. Listening practice that nobody notices is listening practice.
Would you rather. Two bad options and no third choice. The best of the ESL games for adults, because it takes ten seconds to set up and produces real reasoning.

Rotate the format rather than the topic. A group that has done four discussions in a row will talk about anything differently once the fifth is a debate, and these ESL activities for adults need no preparation to swap in.

How to run a speaking lesson that does not stall

A silent group is almost never a group with nothing to say. It is a group that has not been given enough time, enough safety or a specific enough task. Five things fix most of it.

Give thinking time in writing. Two minutes of notes before anyone speaks and the number of students who answer goes up sharply. Speaking cold is the hard version of the same task.
Pairs before the group. Everyone rehearses the idea once with one person, then says it to the room. By then it is a second attempt, which is why it sounds better.
Hand out a position, not a topic. Asking what someone thinks about remote work produces a shrug. Telling them to argue that offices are finished produces an argument.
Correct afterwards, not during. Note four or five errors while students talk and take the last five minutes on them. Interrupting a student mid-idea to fix a preposition costs you the rest of what they were going to say.
Know when to leave a question. If two people have answered and the third is stalling, the question is done. Move on and come back to it later with a different frame.

If you want the same language across several weeks rather than one good hour, the lesson sets group three to five connected ESL speaking lessons around a single theme.

Get access to the speaking lesson library

One teacher subscription covers the ESL speaking lessons and everything else in the library. It runs from 72 dollars a year on Standard to 144 on Pro, which is the plan worth having if you set homework every week, since it adds interactive homework, games and a Miro board for each lesson. Plus sits between them at 120. Monthly billing is available, and a school can ask about access for a whole team. There are free lessons in the catalogue if you would rather teach one before deciding, and they are the same format as the rest, not a cut-down sample.

See subscription plans

Frequently asked questions

Do the lessons include discussion questions?

Yes. Every speaking lesson ends in a task built on discussion questions written for its level, and the teacher notes suggest follow-ups for the students who answer in one line. The questions are part of the plan rather than a separate list, because they only work once the lesson has taught the language they need.

How long is a speaking lesson?

Sixty minutes. Around thirty of those go on teacher-led input before the speaking task, and the last five to seven are reserved for feedback. The plan tells you what belongs in each stage, so you are not deciding on the spot how long to keep talking.

Do the speaking lessons come with a printable handout?

They come with the plan, the teacher notes and the answer keys, which is what you need to run the hour. If you also want a printable sheet for controlled practice or homework, that is what the worksheets section is for, and the two work together in the same lesson.

Do these lessons work for groups?

Yes, and the Speaking Club plans are written for groups specifically, with the talk time spread across several students rather than concentrated on one. Standard speaking lessons work either way, and the teacher notes say how to run a pair task when there is no pair.

What do I do with students who answer in one word?

Ask the follow-up before they finish, and make it a why or a for example. It also helps to set the group a minimum of two sentences and a reason, so a short answer is visibly incomplete rather than merely quiet.

Do these lessons work in one-to-one classes?

Yes, with one change. You answer too, and you go first, because a one to one conversation where only one person is being examined stops being a conversation. Your answer also models the language you want back.