ESL conversations - Compelling Conversations: Questions and quotations on timeless topics - An ESL book review

Most of my students want conversational English. A good teacher will build some discussion into every lesson. I try to have on-going discussions built into every lesson plan. However, it is not always successful. Sometimes, I ask the students to practice a script several times, but they don't see the point of doing it more than once. Another problem is that once they have said what they have to say, they cannot think up more things to say. As a result, some groups get a good conversation going, but other groups, having said all they have to say in one or two minutes sit around with nothing to do.

I have been trying to solve this problem for a long time, and now, with the help of "Compelling Conversations" by Eric H. Roth and Toni Aberson, my students have plenty of compelling conversations in the classroom.

"Compelling Conversations" is divided into four sections:

1. Your Life
2. Free Time
3. Modern Times
4. Civic Life

The topics in this section are good at the beginning of term to help the students get to know one another. One that I used at the beginning of term was "Going Beyond Hello". As it suggests, this gets the students into their first discussion with another classmate. The first part of the lesson is "Telling Your Story", which begins:

1. What's your full name? How do you spell that?
2. Who chose your name? Why?
3. Where were you born? Were you the first child? Second? Fifth?

This continues for another 12 questions. Then there is a vocabulary section which includes vocabulary such as:

• interview
• sibling
• suburb
• possession
• impression
• hobby
• smile
• frown
• enthusiasm
• goals

The next section gives some multicultural proverbs. One in this section is the Latin proverb, "You're never too old to learn." My students found these fascinating as they had not had very much exposure to proverbs before, and students from cultures included in the proverbs were often asked to explain them. And then..."The Conversation Continues"

1. What do you like to do outside? Why?
2. Where do you walk, hike, jog, or bike on the weekends?
3. What's your favorite sport? Why?

Again, there are a total of 15 questions to discuss.
The final section is "Sharing Views" which consists of 14 quotations for the students to discuss.

One of the topics in this section is Talking about Television. My students learned a lot about television in other countries by asking questions such as "What are some influential television programs in your country?" and then reporting back to the class what they had learned.

The sections remain the same as described above with a total of 34 guided questions about television that were broad and all-encompassing. The students never ran out of things to talk about, and when they did, it was after about 45 minutes of discussion.

Some of the other topics in this section areTraveling, Reading Pleasures and Tastes, Moving to Music and Gardening. Therefore, you can see how diverse the topics are.

Some of the topics in this section include Clothes and Fashion, Dating, Enjoying Money and on the more serious side, Gambling and Spending Money and Handling Stress. These topics are timelessly compelling. Young people love talking about dating, and clothes, so for teenagers, some of these are really interesting.

From this section I used the topic Do you Match? which was more suited to my adult students as it is about marriage. For my classes, marriage is a good conversational topic because of the multicultural nature of my classes, however, when I used this unit from Compelling Conversations, it was better than usual because it took them into deeper conversations than usual and the normal level of cultural exchange went to a new level. My class didn't even want to stop for lunch!

There are a lot of very useful conversation topics in this last section. For example, if you find that you have to teach your students how to learn, the topic Learning in School will be a good lead-in to study skills. Studying English is also a good way for students to talk about their methods for learning English and to develop awareness of learning outside the classroom.

However, the topic I used from this section was Crime and Punishment. We were reading a book called Whodunit by Adam Gray and Marcos Benevides, and this conversation topic fitted very well with the fictional story. We were also studying a book about the Law in Australia, in particular, the role of the police and with these three different focuses, the students really grasped the vocabulary involved and became confident talking about crimes and laws.

Suitable for intermediate and above, Compelling Conversations has topics that will fit in with any lesson based on topics, or just as a stand-alone speaking lesson. The questions have been designed to build the conversation, taking the discussion to a deep level.

The page layout has wide margins  with some tips and sayings, such as:

REMEMBER...

Be curious

Be open

Be tolerant

However, I found the students actively took notes in the wide margins while the discussion took place, and this assisted them when I asked them to tell the class something about their partner as the discussion was winding up.

Each topic has consistency of structure with the four sections, talking, vocabulary, sayings, continued conversation and quotations that fit with the topic.

Overall, a book that should be on every ESL teacher's bookshelf!

Eric H Roth is a self-published author.

Toni W Aberson is an Independent Education Management Professional from Wilmington in the North Carolina Area who has been involved in teaching English for over 35 years.