“All too often someone spoils my enjoyment of their company by talking to me.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The first post of this blog is about the most basic form of conversation. Something we love or hate depending on our personality, our mood and the situation.
This class is focused on different verbs used to mean talking which don’t appear that frequently in coursebooks but are often used by native speakers. Verbs such as gossip, yell, go on and 5 more.
You can introduce the topic with the quote at the start of the post or just by writing ‘small talk’ on the board and getting your students to explain what it means, what they think about it, when they might make it etc.
There is a Two Ronnies sketch at the start of the class with credit to Nick Michelioudakis for the extra resource. If you would like to extend the class to 2 hours this is a useful exercise or could be set for homework.
The conversational-meat of the class is a BBC video on small talk in Sweden. This is a great chance to see how different cultures view small talk and whether your students’ cultures are more coconut or peach.
There is additional content to read about and assign as homework. Great if you don’t have much time to prepare!
Tips of the Tongue 