Small talk skills

The main goals of this ESL lesson plan are to:

• – practice common small talk phrases and expand vocabulary for casual conversations in various social contexts;
• – develop English skills through synonym identification, conversation sequencing, phrase matching, reading comprehension, and dialogue completion;
• – watch a video about how to make small talk and engage in discussions about small talk experiences in different situations.

In this upper-intermediate lesson, students will practice common small talk phrases and expand their vocabulary for casual conversations.

Warm-up: 

Students discuss their experiences with small talk.

Video: 

Students watch a video “How To Make Small Talk.” and complete a gap-fill exercise based on the content.

Exercises: 

Students find synonyms to words in a text. In the second exercise, they put parts of a professional conversation in the correct order. Next, they match phrases with the correct endings. Finally they complete dialogues using appropriate phrases from a word bank.

Reading: 

During the reading comprehension section, students analyze a text about small talk and answer in-depth questions.

Discussion: 

The lesson concludes with a final discussion where students engage with questions about small talk in various contexts.