Conversation Groups Made Easy: Get Students Talking with Ellii

If you lead an English conversation group, you know every week can bring new faces and often a wide range of proficiencies.

Ellii has you covered with a variety of content and tools to ensure your conversation groups are lively and impactful, without requiring endless prep time.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel for every session. Ellii's content and gamified tools are built to spark real conversations. Here's how to put each one to work.

Discussion Starters

Students love talking about real issues affecting the world. With over 180 Discussion Starters lessons on current issues like the cost of living and fast fashion, this section gives you full lessons created to get students talking about issues that matter to them. This lesson section is aimed at low-intermediate to advanced learners.

Tips:

• Set a timer and rotate pairs or small groups during the Discussion task so students practice speaking with different people.
• Check out these lessons that come in multiple levels—great for differentiation!
  • Goal-Setting (Low Int) / Goal-Setting (Adv)
  • Climate Change (Low Int) / Climate Change (High Int)
  • Culture Shock (Low Int) / Culture Shock (Adv)
  • Phobias (Low Int) / Phobias (Adv)

Photo Prompts

Photo Prompts use real pictures to spark discussion and storytelling—useful for mixed proficiency groups.

Tips:

• Start simple. Ask students to describe what they see, and then extend the conversation by asking what they think is happening outside the frame.
• Split the group into pairs with the same photo and have them compare their descriptions.
• Easily differentiate your activity. Beginners can name objects and describe the scenes, while advanced students can speculate about backstory and make predictions.

Silent Clips

Silent Clips are short, wordless videos of people and moments, covering categories like body language, holidays, and workplace gestures. Because there's no dialogue, students have to interpret tone, facial expressions, and context clues.

Tips:

• Use a body language clip to launch a discussion on cultural differences based on gestures.
• Put students in pairs to create and present a dialogue based on the silent clip.
• Ask students what they think the person is thinking or about to say, and then have them say their answer out loud and compare with a partner.

Dilemmas

Dilemmas are interactive, high-engagement activities, ideal for sparking thought-provoking debate while building critical thinking skills. Students use their own devices to participate. No prep required!

Tips:

• Give your students sentence stems and key vocabulary to boost confidence and participation. Students can check out the Useful Language feature in each Dilemma for additional support.
• Have students work in groups to create their own dilemma and share with the group.

Mix and match activities based on your students' levels and how much energy the room needs that day. As you're exploring the platform, save content to a folder for easy access!

 

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