Every language teacher knows that relationship building is essential to making the language classroom a place where students can lower their Affective Filters and acquire tons of language. This is easier said than done – so we have to be on the lookout for techniques that can intentionally make this happen. And if they accomplish two goals – both building relationships AND giving students personalized input – all the better!
Why not just start each class with some Small Talk or Chit Chat in the language? Nothing groundbreaking, nothing curricular, just asking good questions and following up on the answers! Through these conversations, we can learn about opinions, experiences, and life circumstances of our precious little flowers, and also fill them up with tons of input. Boom.
Here is a free resource: a set of slides for starting Small Talk conversations in your virtual or in-person classroom! Lots of visual support for your learners, and I can imagine they would be easy to “annotate” on Zoom or turn into a workspace for Jamboard!
Huge shoutout to Bill Langley, who created the Spanish version that I then turned into German! (Any comments / suggestions for the German versions are welcome – I am a lifelong learner myself!)
German Small Talk / Chit Chat Slides
Spanish Small Talk / Chit Chat Slides