Communication is king, long live communication! As the students grow in both confidence and level we want them to communicate with each other and use the language to have natural (well, as natural as possible in the classroom environment) conversations with each other. However, responding to other people is a skill and we need to make sure that the students have the ability to respond to each other in order to turn single utterances into conversations.
This is a mingling activity I usually take my students through early on in a B1 course, although you can do it with lower levels or indeed higher levels if you feel they would benefit from a refresher in how to respond to one another.
Instructions
Before the lesson I usually write up sentences using some structures we have done recently in class and cut then up into individual strips, one sentence per piece of paper. I like to do these myself in order to review language but also to ensure a variety of structures are used. You can, of course, get the students to write their own sentences.
Commenting
Start by eliciting a finish to a simple sentence, such as - I like...
So you end up with something like I like pizza written on the board.
I tend to role play as 2 students; the first student saying the sentence and then the second student just looking blankly at them. I ham it up a lot. Of course, if you've got a good rapport with your students you could ask one of them to read the sentence and then just blankly stare at them. Whatever works.
Elicit what was wrong - There was no response!
Then elicit/teach phrases and words to respond. Importantly at this stage all the students have to do is share words or short phrases. Play with the idea of how you say the words being as important as what you say, especially with the, "How...!". You might find teen classes enjoy being sarcastic. At this stage we don't want to be using questions, that'll come later.
The mingle activity: With the words up on a power point or on the board each student takes a piece of paper, mingles (making sure they talk to everyone in the class) reading their sentence, getting a response and then responding to their partner's sentence.
Everyone sits down.
Asking a question for more information
Repeat step 5, this time eliciting questions that the listener could ask to get more information.
Repeat step 6, this time with people responding to the sentence with a question, which the student responds to. For the sake of variety I tend to get them to change their sentence.
Everyone sits down.
Adding a question to involve the listener
Repeat step 5, this time eliciting questions that could be added to the end of the sentence to involve the listener. Your students will probably point out that the questions are more or less the same, which is what we want as it shows they are paying attention.
Repeat step 6, this time with the students tacking the question onto the end of their sentence. Make sure they create a new question for each partner!
Everyone sits down.
Final pair work activity to bring it all together
Each pair picks one of the sentences and using the 3 things practised earlier in the activity have a conversation using that sentence as the starting sentence. I usually ask them to go for 3 minutes but you can make it more or less depending on level (or motivation!)
Notes
Where I teach we have projectors that project onto the white boards so I normally have power points with some of the language and a space to add students suggestions.
Note taking: either give them time to copy down the phrases or have them take a photo.
If you want them to take notes and the students aren't big fans of taking I usually give them the option of writing down their favourite 3 or 4 phrases/questions.
At the end of the activity I usually tell them this is how I expect them to interact during all speaking activities during the course.
I've attached some sample sentences I have used in the past and a power point that can be used to teach the language.