In the Nosy Neighbour ESL activity students pretend to be a nosy neighbour who won’t stop asking questions.
2+
10-20 mins
Setup
Divide the class into pairs.
Activity
- Student A pretends to be a normal person, and student B is the nosy neighbour.
- The students talk about their current plans and intentions for the future (you may want to focus the conversation according to your target language). Students can use their real life or just invent the plans.
- However, instead of giving information about themselves, student B just repeatedly asks questions. Any detail that student A gives acts as a prompt for another question. For example, What are you doing this weekend? Where are you going? Oh, what are you going to do there? What do you think the weather will be like? etc.
- The aim is for student B to find out as much information as possible and note it down. After a few minutes, the students switch roles and repeat. At the end, they share what they found out with the class or a small group.
Target Language
The Nosy Neighbour ESL activity can be used to practise any or all of the basic future forms, the future simple, the future with going to and future with the present continuous. As such it is designed for high beginner or intermediate students. It is particularly suited to practising questions using this grammar.
As mentioned above, you can focus the activity on a particular future form by giving a timeframe. For example, for the future with the present continuous, plans for the weekend. Or for the future with going to, plans for summer holidays.
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