Find Something in Common ESL Activity For Higher-Level Students

Check out this engaging, interactive ESL Icebreaker activity, Find Something in Common. It’s ideal for classes of any size, from intermediate to advanced English learners. Keep on reading to find out all the details about it!

Find Something in Common ESL Speaking Activity

Skills: Speaking/Listening
Time: 10-15 minutes
Level: High-Beginner to Intermediate
Materials: None

Finding something in common is an ESL activity that is an excellent way for everyone to get to know each other so I usually do this in the first or second class of the semester. It’s also perfect because it requires nothing in the way of preparation and no materials except a pen and paper.

The students stand up with a piece of paper and a pencil in their hands. They have to talk to everyone in the class to try to find something in common (they are both from Seoul, or they both know how to play the piano) with each person. This can be adjusted for the size of the class. If there are more than 15 students or so, I say that students have to talk to at least 10 people.

Once they find this thing in common, they write it down along with the person’s name. Students can keep going until most of the students have talked to everyone.

Emphasize to students that the goal is not to complete this activity as quickly as possible. The goal is to practice speaking English to each other and also get to know some of their classmates.

Finding Something in Common Teaching Tips

This is a great activity for students to practice the sub-skill of initiating a conversation, which is something that many of them find quite difficult. You could coach your students before the activity starts and give them a few phrases or conversation starters to keep in their heads if they get stuck.

However, since this game is mostly for higher-level students, I wouldn’t write them on the board because students will be referring back to them throughout the activity when they are actually capable of remembering a few phrases in their head and can recall them easily.

Many students struggle with speaking because it happens in real-time. Unlike in writing, where we can plan first and then produce later, in speaking, planning and production overlap and often happen at the same time. If our students focus too much on planning, fluency can suffer. If they focus too much on production, accuracy can suffer.

In this activity, fluency is far more important than accuracy because the students are having short, small-talk-type conversations. I tell my students not to worry too much about choosing the perfect vocabulary word, or exact grammar constructions, but instead just focus on communicating quickly, in a way that is “good enough.”

Tell your students that while it is okay to have short conversations about the thing they have in common, the goal of the activity is to try to talk to most of the people in the class, so they need to keep moving and talking to new people. I recommend to my students that they try to spend only 1-2 minutes talking with each person.

Procedure for Find Something in Common:

1. Students stand up with a pencil and paper in their hands.
2. They talk to another student and try to find something they have in common by asking some questions. Questions that work really well are ones like, “Have you ever _____ (lived abroad)?”, “Are you _____ (an only child)?” or, “Do you _____ (have a brother)?”
3. Once they find something in common, they write that down, along with the person’s name.
4. Then, they find a new partner and continue until they’ve talked to everybody in the class or the time is up.
5. The teacher can follow up by asking some students to name 1 or 2 things that they had in common with a classmate.

Did you like this ESL Activity?

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Have your Say about Finding Something in Common 

Have you tried out this TEFL activity? How did it go? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you.

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Last update on 2021-10-16 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API