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If they have a paper, make sure there isn’t room to write an answer, or else it encourages them to talk about the question and try to get a “correct” answer. It’s important to go around the room and listen in and make sure they’re actually asking each other the questions and talking in the target language. If they’re not, try to help them get back on task. You might even want to have two students model the interaction for the class to help them understand what they’re supposed to do.

Another challenge is that sometimes the activity is way too difficult for them. This can be especially true if it came from a textbook. A lot of books promise interaction, but if the activity isn’t at the students’ proficiency level, they won’t be able to do it in the language as a conversation activity.

A final tip is to make sure that the questions or prompts are themed around a single topic, not disconnected questions using the same grammatical form. Psychologically, learners find it far easier to see the connection between questions and prompts that are thematically, rather than grammatically, related. If you think about it, that’s how conversation naturally goes—you’re more likely to talk about one topic with multiple grammatical forms in real life vs. a whole bunch of disconnected topics with the same grammatical structure! And so are our students. Keeping them in the same topical mindspace for a series of questions makes it easier for them to understand and respond, staying in the target language as much as possible.

How do you use turn and talks in your classes? Let us know—maybe you can contribute a future blog post!

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