The press conference

You will need a sticky label for each student or a pack of sticky notes.

Preparation

• Tell students that they have got the job of reporter for a magazine about famous people. They are going to interview some famous people and they need to prepare some general questions they can ask any famous person - actors, singers, sports stars, politicians etc.
• Give some examples, like, ‘Do you enjoy your job?' or ‘Are you happy being so famous?' and get students to write four questions and put them into a table with the questions going down the left hand side and space for five columns to the right.
• Then ask students which famous person they would like to be and give each one a sticky label or a sticky note for them to write the name of the famous person on and stick on themselves.

Procedure

• Put students into two concentric circles with the inner circle facing out and outer circle facing in.
• Tell students that they are going to interview the person directly in front of them for two minutes and note down all the information they find out. They are also going to be interviewed.
• The facing pairs take turns in the different roles of interviewer and famous person. At two-minute intervals shout ‘stop' and ask the outer circle to step one person to the right. Shout ‘start' to give students two more minutes with a new famous person.
• When each student has interviewed and been interviewed five or six times stop the activity and seat students. The information they have gathered about the famous people can then be shared with the group orally or used for a piece of writing for a gossip magazine.
• If you have an odd number rotate one person out of the circle each time you move the other circle around. This person can help you to monitor and can walk around the circle listening to the others in action and making a note of any mistakes they hear.

This activity gets very noisy with a large group but it can be a great way to keep students speaking English for quite a long period of time and you will probably see how their confidence grows as they get the hang of asking and answering the questions.