Adoption

Adoption brings up a lot of different perspectives and personal experiences, which makes for rich conversation practice. These questions range from basic family vocabulary to complex debates about international adoption, ethics, and cultural identity.

Questions are organized by level from beginner to advanced. A printable PDF of all the questions is available at the bottom of the page.

Beginner (A1-A2)

1. What celebrities do you know of who adopted a child?
2. What do you think is the first thing new adoptive parents do when they bring a child home?
3. Do adopted children usually know their birth parents in your country? Whose choice should that be?
4. What questions do people ask adoptive parents? Give me some examples.
5. What kind of family did you grow up in? What was your favorite thing about it?
6. Have you ever adopted a pet from a shelter? What kind of pet was it?
7. What advantages do adopted children have?
8. What are three things a family should do to help a new child feel at home?
9. Do you think boys or girls are adopted more often? What have you heard about that?
10. What do you know about adoption rates in your country?

Elementary (A2)

1. Do you know anyone who was adopted? What was their experience like? How did adoption change their life?
2. What are some of the reasons people adopt children? Which reason do you think is the most common in your country, and why?
3. What are some of the reasons people give children up for adoption? How do you think those parents feel about their decision?
4. What are orphanages like in your country? What do you think life is like for the children who live there?
5. Where do people adopt children from in your country? (Local orphanages, other countries, foster care, etc.)
6. Who in your family would be most likely to adopt a child? What makes you say that?
7. What kind of support do adoptive families need? What are some examples?
8. Have you ever seen a movie or TV show about adoption? Tell me about it.
9. Do adopted children have different rights than biological children in your country? What’s different?
10. What costs are involved in adoption?
11. What are some of the challenges adopted children might face at school? Why?
12. Why do some adopted people want to find their birth parents? What do they hope to learn?
13. Have you ever known a foster family? What was their experience like?

Intermediate (B1)

1. How is adoption viewed in your country?
2. What do you think about the adoption system in your country? What is one thing you would change about it, and why?
3. What do you think about couples that adopt children from different countries? Would you consider it?
4. What qualities make a couple or a person qualified to adopt a child?
5. Should the adoption process be more or less difficult than it is now?
6. Would you ever adopt a child? Why or why not? What factors would influence your decision?
7. How many children should a couple be able to adopt? What factors should determine the limit, and why?
8. What are some ways that adoption rates could be improved?
9. What age is best to adopt a child? What’s good about that age?
10. What kinds of children are hardest to place for adoption? Why do you think that is?
11. What questions should adoptive parents ask before they adopt? Why are those questions important?
12. What do children need to know when they find out they are adopted? Why is that important to tell them?
13. Do you think it matters if adopted children look like their parents? Why?
14. What’s the hardest part of adoption for the parents? How about for the child?
15. Should adoptive parents be required to take parenting classes? What should those classes cover?
16. How do you think adoption is changing in your country? What do you think about those changes?
17. If you could change one thing about the adoption system in your country, what would it be? Why?
18. How do you think growing up with adopted siblings and biological siblings in the same family affects the children? Is it common in your culture or country?
19. How do you think social media has changed the way adopted people search for their birth families? Is that mostly a good thing or a bad thing?

Upper-Intermediate (B2)

1. How does being adopted affect a child’s view of themselves?
2. Should people be able to decide what type of children they want to adopt? (For example: boy or girl, hair color, age, etc.)
3. How much should the government be involved in the adoption process?
4. Should single people be allowed to adopt children? What are the downsides of each view?
5. Should adopted children be told about their adoption from a young age, or should parents wait until they are older? What are the risks of each approach?
6. What do you think is more important for a child: staying with biological relatives or being placed in the best possible home? Give me some examples of when each might be better.
7. What are the advantages and disadvantages of transracial adoption for both the child and the adoptive family?
8. What role do private adoption agencies versus government agencies play? How do their approaches differ?
9. How do cultural attitudes toward adoption differ between collectivist and individualist societies?
10. What factors contribute to the decline in domestic infant adoptions in developed countries? How have agencies adapted?
11. How has public opinion about adoption changed over the past few decades? What do you think caused those changes?
12. How do financial requirements in the adoption process affect who gets to adopt? Is this fair?
13. What role should a child’s cultural background play in deciding which family adopts them? What are the trade-offs?
14. What are the long-term effects on birth parents who give their children up for adoption? How well do support systems address their needs?
15. What happens when adopted children and their birth families have very different expectations about reunion? How should that be managed?

Advanced (C1)

1. How might international adoption simultaneously empower and exploit vulnerable populations in developing countries?
2. How do adoption practices reveal underlying assumptions about nature versus nurture in child development?
3. What paradoxes emerge when adoption is framed simultaneously as a child welfare solution and a form of family building?
4. How might the growing use of genetic testing and DNA databases simultaneously empower adopted individuals seeking their origins and threaten the privacy expectations of birth families who chose closed adoptions?
5. To what extent does the language we use around adoption — terms like ‘real parents,’ ‘giving up,’ and ‘chosen child’ — shape how society views adoptive families and the children themselves?
6. In what ways does the commercialization of adoption — including agency fees, international broker networks, and private arrangements — create ethical dilemmas that undermine the principle of acting in the child’s best interest?
7. How do shifting definitions of ‘family’ in modern societies challenge traditional adoption frameworks, and what assumptions about parenthood do those frameworks reveal?
8. To what extent should the adoption system prioritize a child’s attachment to foster caregivers over biological family reunification, and what does this tension reveal about how we define ‘family’?
9. How might the rise of open adoptions — where birth and adoptive families maintain contact — simultaneously benefit children’s identity development and complicate family boundaries and roles?
10. What ethical responsibilities do governments have when adoption systems have historically been used to separate children from marginalized communities — such as indigenous populations or the poor — under the justification of providing ‘better’ lives?

PDF: Download a PDF of all the questions