March 2026 · 7 min read

10 ESL Speaking Activities That Actually Get Students Talking

Every ESL teacher has experienced the painful silence. You ask an open-ended question, wait, and get nothing back but a nervous smile and a one-word answer. Speaking is the skill students want most and practice least, partly because it is the most exposing. You cannot hide behind a worksheet when you are talking. For adult learners especially, the fear of sounding foolish in a second language can shut down participation before a lesson even gets going.

The trick is not to force output. It is to design activities where speaking becomes the natural, necessary thing to do. When students need to exchange information to complete a task, or when they genuinely want to share an opinion, the talking takes care of itself. Below are ten activities that consistently produce real conversation in online ESL lessons. Each one works in a one-on-one or small group setting over video call, and I have included level suggestions and practical tips drawn from years of using them.

Why Speaking Practice Is Hard to Get Right Online

Before diving into the activities, it is worth acknowledging what makes online speaking practice different from the in-person version. In a physical classroom, you can split students into pairs, walk around, and listen in. Online, you are often the only conversation partner, which means student talking time can easily shrink to a fraction of the lesson. There is also the screen fatigue factor. Adults who already spend their workday on video calls are not excited about another hour of staring at a webcam.

The solution is structure with variety. Give students a clear task, a reason to speak, and a framework to lean on so they are not staring at a blank screen searching for words. If they have recently reviewed relevant vocabulary and grammar, perhaps through a tool like Derstina that lets them study between sessions, they arrive at the speaking activity with the raw material they need. Confidence follows preparation.

The 10 Activities

1. Information Gap

Each participant holds a version of a document, a schedule, a map, a chart, that is missing different pieces of information. The only way to complete it is by asking questions and listening to the other person's answers. This forces genuine communication because neither side can succeed alone.

Best for: A2 through B2. Lower levels can work with simple timetables or price lists. Higher levels can tackle more complex data sets such as survey results or event itineraries.

Tip: Share the two versions via separate screen shares or send each file privately before the activity begins. Resist the urge to let students peek at each other's sheets. The information asymmetry is what makes the conversation happen.

2. Role Plays

Give each student a character card with a name, a situation, and a goal. One person might be a hotel guest trying to get a room upgrade; the other is the front desk manager who has a fully booked hotel. The scenario provides context and purpose, which eliminates the awkward what-do-I-say-now problem that kills free conversation.

Best for: A2 through C1. Adjust complexity through the scenario. Ordering food at a restaurant works for beginners; negotiating a business contract suits advanced learners.

Tip: Write role cards that include a mild conflict or competing interest. If both people want the same thing, the conversation ends too quickly. A little friction extends the dialogue and produces richer language.

3. Picture Description

Display an image, a busy street scene, an unusual photograph, a painting, and ask the student to describe it in detail. You can layer the activity by first asking for pure description, then moving to speculation about what might have happened before or after the moment captured, and finally to personal reaction.

Best for: A1 through B2. Beginners can name objects and colors. Intermediate students can narrate a possible story behind the image, practicing past tenses and modal verbs naturally.

Tip: Choose images that contain people doing things rather than landscapes or abstract art. Humans in action give students more to talk about. If a student dries up, point to a specific detail they have not mentioned yet and ask a focused question.

4. Debate

Present a statement such as "Remote work is better than office work" and assign each student a position, even if it is not their real opinion. Arguing a side you disagree with is actually more productive for language development because it forces you to construct arguments from scratch rather than falling back on rehearsed phrases.

Best for: B1 through C2. Lower-intermediate students can handle simple agree-or-disagree topics. Advanced students can manage more nuanced positions with multiple counterarguments.

Tip: Give students two or three minutes of silent preparation time before the debate starts. Let them jot down key phrases and vocabulary. This small buffer dramatically increases the quality and fluency of what comes out when they start speaking. Having recently reviewed opinion language and linking phrases, perhaps through vocabulary sets on a platform like Derstina, helps students structure their arguments more fluidly.

5. Storytelling Chain

One person starts a story with two or three sentences. The next person continues it. The story can go anywhere, which is part of the fun. You can add constraints to increase the challenge: every contribution must include a specific tense, or a word from this week's vocabulary list, or a sudden plot twist.

Best for: A2 through C1. Beginners can tell simple sequential stories in the past tense. Advanced students can weave in reported speech, conditional structures, and descriptive language.

Tip: Keep turns short, three to five sentences maximum. Long turns let one person dominate and put pressure on them to sustain extended monologue, which is a different skill. Short turns keep the pace up and create a collaborative energy that feels more like play than practice.

6. Two Truths and a Lie

Each student shares three statements about themselves. Two are true and one is invented. The other participants ask follow-up questions to figure out which statement is the lie. This activity generates enormous amounts of natural conversation because the questioning phase is where the real speaking happens.

Best for: A2 through B2. It works at almost any level because students control the complexity of their own statements. A beginner might say simple facts; an intermediate student might craft deliberately tricky half-truths.

Tip: Model the activity first with your own three statements and let students interrogate you. This shows them that the goal is to ask probing questions, not just guess randomly. It also builds rapport, which loosens everyone up for their own turn.

7. Interview Format

One student plays the interviewer and the other plays a specific character: a famous historical figure, a CEO launching a product, or a person with an unusual job. The interviewer prepares questions in advance, and the interviewee has to improvise answers in character. This is role play's more structured cousin, and it works particularly well for adult professionals who are comfortable with interview-style conversations.

Best for: B1 through C2. The character complexity scales the difficulty. Interviewing a pizza delivery driver is simpler than interviewing the inventor of the internet.

Tip: Provide the interviewer with a brief background document about the character so they can ask informed follow-up questions rather than generic ones. The richer the preparation, the more extended and natural the conversation becomes.

8. Opinion Gap

Unlike an information gap where students exchange facts, an opinion gap asks students to share and compare their genuine views on a topic. Present a scenario such as "Your city has funding for one new public project: a park, a library, or a sports center. Which would you choose and why?" Each student argues for their preference and has to respond to the other's reasoning.

Best for: B1 through C1. The topic determines the difficulty. Everyday dilemmas work at lower levels, while ethical or policy questions push advanced students.

Tip: Avoid topics that are too personal or politically charged for students you do not know well. Stick to practical, low-stakes dilemmas until you have built enough trust for deeper discussions. The goal is engaged conversation, not discomfort.

9. Spot the Difference

Show each student a slightly different version of the same image. They describe their versions to each other and identify the differences without looking at each other's pictures. This classic activity translates perfectly to online lessons because the screen naturally prevents peeking. It produces a high density of descriptive language, prepositions, and clarification questions.

Best for: A1 through B1. It is one of the best activities for lower levels because the language required is concrete and visual. Students practice phrases like "in the top right corner" and "next to the window" repeatedly in a meaningful context.

Tip: Create your own spot-the-difference images using simple photo editing. Take a stock image, duplicate it, and make five to eight small changes. Custom images let you embed vocabulary from recent lessons, turning a fun game into targeted review.

10. Ranking Tasks

Give students a list of items and ask them to rank them from most to least important, useful, or desirable. For example: "You are stranded on a desert island. Rank these ten items in order of usefulness: a mirror, a knife, a rope, a water bottle..." The ranking itself is not the point. The discussion that follows, where students justify their choices and challenge each other's reasoning, is where the speaking happens.

Best for: B1 through C2. The language of comparison, justification, and disagreement that ranking tasks produce is exactly what intermediate and advanced students need to develop. Even lower-intermediate students can participate if the items are familiar.

Tip: Insist on justification. Do not let students simply list their order. After every placement, ask "Why did you put that above this one?" This single question can sustain a discussion for fifteen or twenty minutes with the right group.

Making Speaking Activities Stick

These activities work best when students come prepared with the language they need. A student who has reviewed vocabulary and grammar structures before the lesson, using flashcards, quizzes, or review tools available on platforms like Derstina, walks into a speaking activity with words and phrases ready to use. The difference is immediate. Instead of stopping mid-sentence to search for a word, they can focus on communicating their ideas, which is the whole point of speaking practice.

The other thing that makes a real difference is variety. Do not use the same activity format three lessons in a row. Rotate through these ten activities so that each lesson feels fresh. Adult learners drop out when they can predict exactly what a lesson will look like. Keep them slightly off-balance, in a good way, and they stay engaged.

Finally, remember that your job during speaking activities is to listen, not to teach. Save error correction for after the activity ends. Note down recurring mistakes, then address them in a brief feedback round. Interrupting a student mid-thought to fix a verb tense does more harm than good. It trains them to monitor every word instead of communicating freely, which is the opposite of what speaking practice should accomplish.