In this article we are going to look at what I have found to be a very successful strategy for teaching ESL students using conversation questions. This is a strategy that I have personally found to be very efficient at increasing student fluency and drawing out persistent errors.

Focus your questions

The first thing you need to do is decide what your questions will be targeting and how much time you will spend on the questions. I find that a general rule is five questions equal a minimum of five minutes and a maximum of ten minutes. After you decide how the questions fit into the time span of your lesson you need to decide what you will target with your questions. Will you target a specific topic (i.e. movies, travel, marriage)? Will you target your questions so that your students will produce a specific vocabulary or grammar focus (i.e. adverbs of manner, comparatives, the simple past)? If you don't have a specific target for your conversation questions your students will feel like you just gave them some busy work and there really isn't a point to answering the questions. Let your students know what you are targeting; sometimes (especially with a grammar focus) the questions can seem random. Tell them the topic that they will be discussing or the grammar structure you want them to produce.

Group Size

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, especially for brainstorming, 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. 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 or groups of four often works quite well.

Mistakes are okay

Assure your students that mistakes are okay. If they aren't making mistakes then 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.

Let the conversation flow

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 class 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 that they are having a natural conversation. Just make sure that 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 completely true, I do care about what they talk about, but I want them to feel free enough to branch off into natural conversation. I would say 99.9% 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.

Keep out of the discussion

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.

Take notes

While you are monitoring your students' discussion, 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 that 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 is 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. If you need conversation questions you can find them based on topic, grammar point, or textbook at ESL Conversation Questions. You can also find some ice breaker activities there as well. You may find that these tips don't suit your teaching style but 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 for you and your class.