Stories
72 conversation questions and prompts
Choose a question or prompt. Tell a story or share your thoughts. Give details when you can.
Use the level groups as a guide when choosing prompts for your students.
A1
Beginner (A1)
9 questions
- What is your favorite story?
- What animals are in some of your favorite stories?
- Where do the stories you like happen?
- Which stories do you know in English?
- What stories have a lot of magic?
- Who is very clever in a story you know?
- Who makes you laugh with their stories?
- Who tells long stories in your family?
- Do you like to tell a story to one person or a big group?
A2
Elementary (A2)
19 questions
- What kinds of stories do you like best?
- Who told you stories when you were a child? What kind of stories did they tell?
- What is your favorite way to enjoy a story: reading, watching, or listening?
- Tell your group a true story that happened to you.
- Tell your group a funny story.
- Tell your group a story that you heard when you were a child.
- Who tells you stories about how life was in the past?
- What stories does your family tell about you?
- Tell me about a story in which an animal can talk.
- Do you ever make up stories in your head before you sleep?
- Tell me about a story with a secret.
- What kinds of stories do children make up when they play?
- Tell me a story about someone who gets something they do not expect.
- Are you a quiet listener, or do you ask lots of questions?
- What story does someone in your family tell again and again?
- How do you feel when someone tells you the end of a story first?
- What story do people ask you to tell over and over?
- What part of telling a story in English is difficult for you?
- Tell us the story behind something you keep at home.
B1
Intermediate (B1)
28 questions
- What famous stories do people tell in your country?
- Tell your group a scary story.
- Tell your group an unbelievable story.
- Tell your group a story with a moral lesson in it.
- Tell your group a story from history.
- What is a story you remember even though you have forgotten its name?
- What stories do older people in your family tell about the past being better than the present?
- What did you imagine when you heard a story but could not see any pictures?
- What story would you tell someone who had never heard a fairy tale?
- What story did you believe was true when you first heard it, but it turned out it wasn't?
- Tell me about a story that people in your family disagree about.
- Tell me about a story in which someone wins by being clever.
- What is a story you have heard in more than one version?
- How much can someone exaggerate a true story before it bothers you?
- What makes you suspect that someone is making up a story?
- Tell me about a story that explains how something in nature began.
- Which story made you afraid of something that seemed harmless before?
- Tell us about a story you heard from someone you had just met.
- What kinds of details make you lose interest in a story?
- What changes when you hear a story from someone who was actually there?
- Which stories are more fun to hear in a group than alone?
- What story did you misunderstand the first time you heard it?
- When does acting out part of a story make it better?
- What happened the last time you tried to tell a story but could not stop laughing?
- What story about you would you rather your family stopped telling?
- When you tell a true story, which details do you usually leave out?
- What story do you tell differently to children and adults?
- When has a story helped you explain something better than advice did?
B2
Upper Intermediate (B2)
12 questions
- Tell me about how a movie based on a book you read first was different than how you had pictured it in the book.
- Why do you think people pass on frightening stories they cannot prove?
- How would you feel if someone used an event from your life in a made-up story?
- What story did you once dismiss as childish but later appreciate?
- How much does knowing the storyteller change whether you believe their story?
- Tell me about a story that you and another person understood very differently.
- What kinds of stories do people tell to make themselves look better?
- What makes a familiar story worth retelling to a new generation?
- When do questions from listeners improve a story, and when do they spoil it?
- How does a story change when the person it is about is in the room?
- When is it fair to tell someone else’s embarrassing story?
- How do you decide whether an unbelievable story is worth passing on?
C1
Advanced (C1)
4 questions
- When a traditional story offends modern listeners, what should a storyteller keep or change?
- How can repeating a story about yourself change the way you remember the original event?
- How is the story of your country and its people different than the story the rest of the world tells about your country and its people?
- How are stories useful for conveying a society's shared views of morality? How much should those stories change as the society's views change?