Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello all, first post here.

I work for an Intensive English Program at a University in California. I generally work in the office but have been put in charge of running a conversation partners program for the next three weeks. It's all kind of last minute so I haven't really had much time to prepare on top of my normal secretarial duties.

This program is different in that it is monitored and our adult/college age students are partnered with native English speaking teens. I am having a hard time finding enough topics to keep them talking. We meet twice a week for an hour and a half.

At the first meeting, they already covered a lot of basic getting to know one another information. I've thought of a few broad topics for discussion e.g. family/social environment in your country, goals and aspirations, discussing American slang and identifying and challenging stereotypes (towards the end of the program). Now I am just having a hard time trying to keep partners talking on the subject for more than 5 minutes.

It's not a class or for credit so I don't want to make them do too much work outside of practicing basic conversational skills and learning about cultural differences. Also, I am only there for the first 20 minutes or so to get the ball rolling and then there is another volunteer from the teen program who watches them and does nothing more.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Use the participants as a resource. They should know one another well enough to be able to keep up the conversations now. The adult students have to become excellent questioners and listeners. The teens who I presume are second language learners, will have many experiences they want explained. Not many programs give students the time to get to know one another so closely and intimately and it seems to be an excellent opportunity to talk about really important things in the teenager's life and get some guidance and counselling. How to get and keep a girlfriend/boyfriend? How to deal with parents and siblings? What path to follow in future studies and occuupations? What to do about drugs? sex? Where to look for summer or after school jobs? You have to let each pair take the path that is most interesting to them.

You might check out www.compelllingconversations.com for free chapters on several conversation topics such as pet peeves, being yourself. Each chapter includes over 30 questions, 5 proverbs, and over 10 witty quotations. It's designed for conversation clubs, tutoring, and advanced ESL classes.