Small talk skills

The main goals of this ESL lesson plan are for students to:

• – practice common vocabulary and phrases used in small talk for casual conversations in various social contexts;
• – boost their active vocabulary by completing synonym identification, conversation sequencing, phrase-matching, reading comprehension, and dialogue completion exercises;
• – think about the advice in a video called “how to make small talk”, and to discuss their own experiences with small talk.

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

Warm-up: 

Students discuss their experiences with small talk.

Video: 

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

Exercises: 

First 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: 

Students analyze a text about small talk and answer some in-depth questions about it.

Discussion: 

Students practice expressing themselves in English by discussing a range of questions related to small talk. Students should aim to reuse new vocabulary and expressions acquired during the lesson.