Ways To Improve Teaching Practice | #1 Cascading pairwork

Ten Practical Ways To Improve Teaching Practice

#1 A cascading pair work speaking activity

In EFL, the classic Find Someone Who is the default mingling activity. But it’s narrow: “success” usually means locating a person, not producing meaningful language. It generates movement, not real interaction. It is activity masquerading as meaningful learning activity.

So, I found someone. Now what? How has my worldview changed?

I want to offer you a cascading pair work activity that is far more linguistically productive and much better at developing group and class consciousness. All you need is a timer and some ideas.

1️⃣ Get students standing in a large enough classroom space, or out into the corridor.
2️⃣ Tell them they’ll work in pairs. If there’s an odd number, you join in.
3️⃣ Give them two ideas (A vs B). Their job is to compare the two, say which they prefer, and explain why. Example ideas could be: getting married before 30 vs after 30, watching films in the cinema vs at home, walking to college vs coming by bicycle. You decide what’s appropriate.
4️⃣ Set a time limit appropriate for the level: A1 30–45 seconds, A2 90 seconds, B1 120 seconds.
5️⃣ When the timer goes off, they change partners. As a rule of thumb, repeat the activity one fewer time than half the number of students so everyone speaks to everyone else.

Follow up:

1️⃣ Bring students back to class and tell them to find paper to write on.
2️⃣ Ask them to write three sentences beginning with “I learned that…”, focusing on the most interesting things they discovered, then share with a partner.
3️⃣ Run a short form‑focused stage: take one learning point from each student, highlight useful language, and “save” the most interesting point as a future lesson topic (for example, Suliman has 12 horses on his family farm).
4️⃣ Move into writing: students list the topics they discussed, choose one, and write about it for a set time.
5️⃣ Students read their writing to a partner, ask three follow‑up questions, then swap roles.

This single activity becomes a lesson engine: it builds class cohesion and group consciousness, generates real information, and naturally feeds into reflection, form focus, and writing.

It also has the tremendous advantage that everybody speaks to everybody else which is much better in terms of coverage. Usually, learners might speak to just one person for the entire lesson. How much better to be exposed to 5,6 or 7 different voices, rather than just one?

Compare this now to Find Someone Who. After this activity a learner can say:

1 I was able to express new things I learned about other people.
2 I was able to express my views about different topics.
3 I was able to listen to another person’s ideas about different topics.
4 I could compare myself with other people
5 I was able to write for a period of time about a topic.

Better than Kahoot, right?