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When working with world language classes or English language learners, have you ever asked a question only聽to be answered with complete silence and blank stares?聽It鈥檚 a common issue鈥攏early聽every teacher has聽struggled with encouraging students to speak in a language they鈥檙e still learning.

A student may have a deep fear of making a mistake, or may be just plain shy, even in their native language.聽Whatever the reason, here is a list of a few fun activities to get your students to speak. This list is for more advanced聽students.

12 Ways to Get Language Learners Talking

1. Who鈥檚 Telling the Truth?聽Have each student write聽three facts about themselves that nobody in the class knows on a piece of paper.聽Make sure each student includes their name on the top of the page.聽Collect the sheets of paper and bring three students to the front of the room.聽Read aloud one of the facts that is true for one of these three students.聽

All three claim that the fact is theirs, and the class then proceeds to question them in an attempt to determine who is telling the truth聽and who is lying.聽Each student is allowed to ask one question to one of the three students.聽After a round of questioning, the students guess who is telling the truth.

2. Variations on the game Taboo: For variation 1, create a PowerPoint presentation with聽a noun on each slide.聽Have one student come to the front of the room and sit with their back to the PowerPoint.聽The rest of the students聽take turns describing the words on the slides, and the student at the front has to聽guess them.

For variation 2, separate the students into groups of four or five.聽Place a pile of cards with random nouns in the center of each group.聽Have students take turns describing a noun聽for their group members to guess.聽The group member who guesses correctly keeps the card, so there鈥檚 competition to see who has聽the most cards at the end of the game.

Variation 3 is for advanced speakers.聽Separate the class into two teams. Students are given a word to describe to their teammates, in addition to a list of words that they cannot use in their description.聽Each student should have two to three聽minutes to see how many words their teammates can guess.

3. Descriptive drawing activity:聽Pair up the students and give聽each student聽a picture, placing it face down so partners cannot see each other鈥檚 cards.聽They must describe the picture for their partner to draw.

4. Comic strip descriptions:聽Give each student a portion of a comic strip.聽Without showing their pictures to one another, the students should attempt to describe their image, and put the comic strip into the correct order.聽After about 10 minutes, the students can guess the order, show one another their portion, and see if they were correct.

5. Secret聽word:聽Students are given a random topic聽and a random word that is unrelated to the topic.聽The students must hide the word in a聽speech about the topic鈥攖hey鈥檙e trying to make sure聽the other students can鈥檛 guess the聽secret聽word.聽The other students聽listen carefully to the speech and attempt to guess the secret word.

6. Debates:聽Give each student a piece of paper with 鈥渁gree鈥� written on one side聽and 鈥渄isagree鈥� on the other side.聽Read aloud a controversial statement, and have each student聽hold up their聽paper聽showing the agree or disagree side depending on their opinion.聽Choose one student from each side to explain their position and participate in a short debate.

7. Impromptu speaking:聽Prepare聽a list of topics that students will be able to talk about.聽Split the class into two teams, and have each student choose a number鈥攖hat鈥檚 the order they will go in. Each student will respond to a statement without preparation.聽They must continue speaking for 45 seconds.聽As the student is speaking, the other team listens for moments of hesitation, grammatical mistakes, and vocabulary mistakes.聽If the other team can correctly identify an error, they get a point.

8. Desert island activity:聽Give each student a piece of paper and tell them to draw an item鈥攁ny item. Collect the drawings and pass them out again; no student should receive their own drawing.

Next, tell the students that they鈥檝e been stranded on a desert island, and only half of the class can survive and continue to inhabit the island. The only thing each student will have on the island聽is the item depicted in the drawing given to them, and their goal is to convince the class that they should survive based on that item.

9. Storytelling activity:聽Bring four students to the front of the classroom.聽Three of them should sit in a row, and one聽should stand behind them and act as a controller.聽Give the controller聽a stack of cards聽with nouns written on them.

The controller will hand a noun to one of the three students, who will start to tell a story.聽The student continues telling the story until the controller decides to hand another noun to another student, who will then take over the story.

10. Two Truths, One Lie: Each student should write three statements聽about themselves on a piece of paper.聽Two of them should be聽true, and one should be a lie.聽Students read their three statements, and their classmates聽question them to try to determine which statement is a lie.

11. True/false storytelling:聽Give each student a piece of paper with either 鈥渢rue鈥� or 鈥渇alse鈥� written on it. Each student should tell the class a story that is true or false, depending on which word they received, and the class must guess whether it鈥檚 true.聽To add to the activity, you can allow the other students to question the student telling the story.

12. I Have Never...:聽All students in the class should start this activity holding five fingers in the air (you can use less fingers to do this more quickly).聽The student who goes first聽tells the class one thing that they have never done.聽The students who have done that activity should put a finger down, and tell the class a story about this activity. A student is out of the game when all of their fingers are down.