In the Love It Hate It ESL Activity, students have to pretend to either love or hate different things, and argue their assigned opinion.
2+
10-20 mins
Setup
You will need to prepare (or improvise) a list of things for the students to love or hate (food, activities, types of music etc.). It’s often fun to tailor these things that you know will get your class talking. You can write them on the board one at a time, or prepare a computer slideshow.
Alternatively, if you don’t have have time to prepare anything, the topics in our online Love It Hate It Generator should work for most classes.
Divide the class into two groups. The two groups sit in parallel lines opposite each other (so they can both see the board).
Activity
- Assign one group to ‘Love’ the first topic and one side to ‘Hate’ it. Write/project the topic on the board.
- Explain to the students that they now have to argue the point of view they’ve been given for one/two minutes, without stopping.
- The students give their assigned opinions and argue their point of view with the student(s) opposite them (using the target language if you specify one). Encourage the students to be passionate – remind them this is an argument! Some classes won’t need any encouragement, but it does depend on your group.
- When the time is up, stop the students.
- Swap the love/hate roles and start again with another topic. Repeat the process for future topics, swapping the roles each time.
Target Language
The Love It Hate It ESL activity is a really fun warmer or time-filler with the right group. Even with quieter students, expressing opinions is an important skill, and not using their real feelings can help them be more open.
You can also use it to practise different ways of expressing likes and dislikes. Instruct the students to use learned expressions like I’m crazy about, I can’t stand etc. Alternatively, you could tell them to focus on using different adjectives to explain their opinions.
Because of the nature of the activity, the Love It Hate It ESL activity can be done with any level of student from high beginner to advanced. However, you may want to adjust the topics and discussion time accordingly.
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