The following fun, no-prep, 1-hour conversation lesson is sure to get your advanced students talking.

Step 1: Students write about a room.

Divide the class into two large teams. It’s not necessary to move their chairs yet. Just make sure you know who is in which team.

Next give every student a blank piece of paper and tell them to write a description of what one room in their house looks like. (Some classes might need you to write a few sentences on the board as examples.)

At the bottom of the paper, tell them to write five things about themselves, such as adjectives describing their personality, what their hobbies are, what colors they like, etc.

Now collect the papers from team 1 and team 2 into two separate piles. Put the papers aside for now.

Step 2: What is an interior design TV show?

Now ask students the following three questions. Have a short class discussion.

1. Have you ever watched an interior design TV show, such as a TLC channel show?
2. What usually happens on those TV shows?
3. Would you like to have someone else design your home? Why or why not?

If you want, you can show students a clip from one of these interior design TV shows.

Step 3: It’s time to design!

Next, divide students into pairs, keeping team members with team members, so one pair should consist of two students from the same team. Now go around and give one paper from the opposite team to each pair. So if there is a pair of students, both from team 1, give them one piece of paper from team 2. (You won’t use all of the papers yet.)

When every pair has a paper, tell them that they are going to give this person’s room a makeover based on what they wrote at the bottom, so if they wrote that they like pink, then maybe they can paint the walls in that person’s room pink.

Give them time to write down how they would change the room.

While they’re writing, put these phrases on the board.

1. We would…
2. We’d like to…
3. We think it’d be a good idea to…
4. Because you like _____, we decided to…

Students can use these phrases during the discussion later.

Step 4: The big reveal!

Now tell team 1 to go sit with the person from team 2 whose room they’ve redesigned. They can go describe their ideas to that person. If that person likes it, they can put a smiley face on the paper. If the person from team 2 disliked it, they can put a sad face on the paper.

Then let the pairs from team 2 go describe their ideas to the person from team 1. 

Step 5: Repeat!

Repeat the process one more time for the remaining papers. Allow students to get back with their partners, write down their ideas for their new designs, and share it with the next lucky (or unlucky) homeowner/renter.

Step 6: How did you do? And feedback.

At the end, count up how many smiley faces and sad faces there are. Who did a better job? Team 1 or team 2?

If you have extra time, ask students to discuss the pros and cons of letting others redesign your home.

That’s it! This lesson can easily be stretched to fill more than one hour, if you need or want. I hope your students had fun being interior designers for the day.

If you want more advanced conversation lessons about homes, try this very interesting lesson about certain Korean houses.