ESL Christmas Questions Activity

I’m really happy with this one 🙂 I think this will be a big hit with any group this holiday season. It was designed to help beginners practice their question making skills, but the premise works for intermediate or advanced students, too, as long as you expect a bit more from them. In this ESL Christmas Questions Activity, students will make questions within a Christmas theme that match the answers. Then, once the questions have been corrected, students break off into pairs or small groups to ask their Christmas questions to each other!

How to use it

This activity was designed for the online classroom, for example ZOOM, but can also work as a printable!

1. Display the PDF for all students to see.
2. Choose a theme on the board. Tell your students they must make 3 questions, each one matching a different answer.
3. Give your students a time limit to create their questions. Once they finish, have each student share their questions individually. Let students correct each other’s questions.
4. All original questions earn the student a point. Continue with another theme and repeat the process as long as time permits.
5. Once each student has a sufficient number of questions, you have run out of themes, or time is running low, break your students into pairs or small groups.
6. Now, they will take the questions they created during the game and ask them to their partner or group members in order to learn more about each other’s holiday traditions and plans!
7. If you still have time and want to continue, bring everyone back to the group and let student’s present how their holiday seasons differ from one another based on the interview portion.

Beats a fill-in-the-blank question activity any day!

Theme: Food

Who cooks the best Christmas dinner? My grandma

What is your favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Cookies

Does your family eat a big Christmas Turkey? No.

Each theme contains one yes or no question to allow for more creative questions. If you are working with beginners, you should make sure they understand some of the phrases that might answer a yes or no questions, e.g. “Doesn’t everybody?”, “You bet!”