Supplementary activities for Natural English Intermediate Unit 1

1. “Haven’t I Met You Somewhere Before”

from Intermediate Communication Games

Two people pretend to meet for the first time and have to continue the conversation and naturally drop in a word or sentence they have been given by the teacher. When the time limit is up, anyone who has managed to successfully use the word or phrase they have been given without their partner working out which word or phrase it was gets a point)

In threes, one person talks about a topic and the one person listening has to be as enthusiastic and helpful in continuing the conversation as possible, e.g. by using tag questions or extreme intonation. The third person then listens to exactly the same story from the same person and tries to respond in an even more interested way. The person who was telling the story then judges who the best listener was. Possible topics (which don’t necessarily have to be interesting, because the listener should make it so by asking interesting follow up questions) include:

- Last weekend

- The last time I studied English

- Something I like cooking

4. Taboo topics ranking

Students rank from the easiest to most difficult topic to talk about with strangers or acquaintances, and then compare their answers. This works well in a mixed culture class.