Small Talk Basics
Aims
Goal: make two minutes of friendly small talk — weather, weekend, and a “by the way” topic change.
The lesson, stage by stage
- Warm up5 min
Warm-up: Two friendly minutes
2 warm-up questions
- Reading10 min
Reading: Making Conversation
Read a 133-word text about Making Conversation
- Vocabulary8 min
Vocabulary: Small Talk Words
6 items
- Practice7 min
Practice: Small Talk Phrases
Gap-fill exercise, 6 items
- Practice7 min
Practice: Build Small Talk Sentences
Word-ordering exercise, 5 items
- Dialogue10 min
Dialogue: Making Small Talk
Role-play: You meet a colleague at the coffee machine at work (6 lines)
- Discussion10 min
Discussion: Your mission: keep it going
3 discussion questions
Open the full lesson
The remaining 6 stages of this lesson, with the procedure, the examples and the exercises, are included with Starter, along with the interactive version you can teach from. Lesson 1 of this course is free: the full plan is on this site, and a free account opens it in the interactive player.
Target vocabulary
In a Tuton account these words become your student's vocabulary deck, so they come back in practice between lessons.
This plan comes from the Building Confidence course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.