Looking for some speaking activities tips to improve your English fluency and get that international job that you want? Then you've come to the right place! The ability to speak in a foreign language is one of the main factors that demonstrate fluency in a language, so we have chosen some very simple exercises for you to train your conversation in English. 🗣️💬

Conversation Alive is an online speaking club focused on teaching English conversation skills, so we are well aware of the importance of this aspect when you’re learning a new language, especially for those with professional goals that demand English. We have students from all over the world who attend our online conversation classes weekly and we invite you to come and practice English with us. Sign up and try for up to 5 days free!

Ready to have more confidence and increase your vocabulary? So let's see these 5 activities to practice speaking English! 

Most activities are recommended to be done with at least two people, so look for a conversation partner if you need to.

Speaking Activity 1: Interview

• If you are looking to practice your English with a focus on applying for international job vacancies, this is the best activity for you.

  
  

  The activity consists of creating a list of questions to be answered, whether with a professional focus or on any other topic. You can write the questions and answer them yourself, or ask someone else to interview you, this way you can have a better feel of how you would interact in this scenario.

  
  

  If your focus is to train for job interviews, you can make a list of questions and invite a conversation partner to ask you these questions, this way you will feel better prepared the next time you have a job interview.

  
  

  Some questions you may include:

  • What are your main skills?

  • What was your biggest professional challenge?

  • Name 3 personal flaws that you can improve.

  • Describe a moment when your strongest skills were important in your career.

Speaking Activity 2: What is the word? (similar to the boardgame Taboo)

You know when you want to say something and you can't recall the right word? Surely you've been through that, that moment when you ended up needing to use other terms to say or describe what you wanted in the first place.

This speaking activity requires at least two people. The goal is to enrich your vocabulary. In this exercise, the first step is for one of the people to choose a word. Then, that player must explain the word to the other person without using it so the other player can guess.

If participants already have an advanced level, the activity can be more difficult by prohibiting the use of synonyms for the word that must be guessed.

Oh, and you can choose any topic, including words and expressions related to business English. For example meeting, deadline, goal, brainstorming… And so on!

Speaking Activity 3: Guess what…

There's a game on the internet called Akinator, where a virtual genius can guess everything you're thinking. The objective of this activity is similar, and you can train both vocabulary and asking questions.

With at least two participants, this activity requires that the participants choose a central theme for each round. Once the subject is chosen, one of the players must think about a term related to that topic, while the other person asks a series of questions to try to guess what the first person thought. Questions can only be answered with “Yes” or “No”, so they must be objective.

To make the game more challenging, participants can set the maximum number of questions or guesses they can have per round.

If you want to focus on corporate English, choose topics related to the work environment and professional situations, so you can train questions and vocabulary related to the topic you want to improve.

Speaking Activity 4: Complete the story…

Have you ever heard that the same story can be told in different ways? It sure can! 

The point of this activity is to use your creativity and your way of telling a story, and work on your vocabulary as you add to or finish a story that someone else started.

At least two people are recommended for this activity, but the more people, the cooler it gets. Together with your conversation partner or group of friends, choose a central topic and select someone to start narrating a story that makes sense with the chosen subject. At some point, the next person in the duo or group must continue that story, until the last person makes an ending to the plot.

This is a great activity to do with friends and create the funniest stories together. When passing the narration of the plot to the other person, use expressions that leave the story in abeyance, such as: “and then”, “and after that”, “when”, “at that time”, and “until”. Among other options!

Speaking Activity 5: Sound, Camera, and Action!

If you've ever imagined yourself being the narrator of a movie or a video, this is your moment to shine!

In this activity, choose a short film or video from the internet so that you can narrate the story. To carry out this activity, the step by step is:

• Choose some short video to narrate;

• Watch the video once without sound, imagining the story and possible narrations;

• Grab a recorder and start to record your voice;

• Play the video for the second time without sound and start narrating in English what you are seeing, using your vocabulary and creativity;

• After that, listen to the audio you recorded to hear your pronunciation and see possible improvements when expressing yourself in English.

You can also do this activity with a conversation partner, asking them to record your story. Later, you can take turns and share ideas on how some parts of the story could have been better, which words can be added or changed for an expression, or even slang.

Practice your English conversation skills with people from all over the world on Conversation Alive. Know more here!