Childhood

Childhood memories tend to bring out detailed stories and genuine emotion. Good for practicing past tense while sharing experiences everyone can relate to.

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. Did you have brothers or sisters? What did you do together?
2. Did you walk to school or take the bus? How long did it take?
3. Did you get an allowance when you were young? What did you spend it on?
4. What was your favorite food when you were a child? Do you still like it?
5. What did your bedroom look like when you were a child? What was on the walls?
6. Did you ever have a pet when you were a child? Tell me about it.
7. Have you ever gotten lost as a child? What happened?
8. What was school lunch like when you were a kid? What did you usually eat?
9. What is the scariest thing that happened to you as a child? What happened?
10. What is the funniest thing you remember from your childhood?

Elementary (A2)

1. What was the best thing about your childhood?
2. What do you miss most about being a child? Why do you miss it?
3. What were some of your favorite activities when you were a child?
4. Who were you really jealous of when you were a child? Why were you jealous?
5. What was your experience at school like? (elementary, junior high, or high school)
6. Where did you like to play the most: inside or outside? What’s good about each?
7. What foods did you hate as a child? Why didn’t you like them?
8. Have you ever gone back to a place from your childhood? What did you think of it?
9. Did you get in a lot of trouble as a child?
10. What did you usually do during summer vacation as a kid? What was the best part?

Intermediate (B1)

1. What do you think is most important for a happy childhood? Why do you think so?
2. What about your childhood do you wish you could change? Why would you change it?
3. Where did you grow up? How did that affect your childhood?
4. Who, besides your parents, had the biggest impact on your childhood? How did they influence you?
5. What do you want to provide your children that you didn’t have when you were growing up?
6. What is the best age to be a child? Why?
7. If you could relive one day from your childhood, which day would you choose? Why that day?
8. Should children have homework every day? Why or why not?
9. What makes a good parent? Give me some examples.
10. Do you think children need more free time or more structured activities? What’s good about each?
11. How important are childhood friendships for development? Why do you think so?

Upper-Intermediate (B2)

1. Do you think that children these days have a better or worse childhood than your generation? Why?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an only child versus having siblings?
3. How do economic factors affect what kind of childhood someone has? What are the long-term implications?
4. What do you think parents worry about most when raising children? Is it the same in every country?
5. Should children be allowed to choose what they eat, or should parents decide for them? What are the downsides of each?
6. Compare how childhood is viewed in different cultures. What cultural values does this reflect?
7. What role should failure and disappointment play in childhood? How do you make decisions about when to let children struggle versus when to help?
8. How do different parenting styles affect children’s development? What are the tradeoffs of each approach?
9. How might growing up in a multilingual environment shape not just how a child communicates but how they think about the world?
10. How has the role of grandparents in raising children changed over the past few decades? What do you think drove those changes?
11. What do you think makes some people remember their childhood clearly while others forget most of it?
12. What are the benefits and risks of competitive sports for young children? At what age should competition start?
13. How has social media changed childhood and adolescence? Consider both positive and negative effects.

Advanced (C1)

1. To what extent does the decline in unsupervised childhood play reflect genuine safety concerns versus changing parenting anxieties and social expectations? How do perception and reality diverge?
2. To what extent does the modern emphasis on individual child psychology obscure the role of social structures and economic systems in shaping childhood experiences? What gets overlooked when we focus on parenting rather than policy?
3. How might the way adults romanticize their own childhoods both preserve cultural memory and distort historical reality? What functions does childhood nostalgia serve for adults and societies?
4. To what extent does the concept of ‘childhood’ as a protected developmental stage reflect modern Western values versus universal human needs? How has the globalization of this concept affected different cultures?
5. Why do societies that claim to value children above all else often fail to fund the institutions such as schools, healthcare, and childcare that serve them?
6. How do societal expectations of childhood simultaneously protect children and limit their autonomy? What tensions emerge from treating children as both vulnerable and developing agents?
7. To what extent do the stories a culture tells its children, through fairy tales, media, and family narratives, shape that society’s values for generations?
8. To what extent should a child’s right to privacy and autonomy be balanced against a parent’s responsibility to monitor and guide them, especially in the digital age?
9. How might the pressure to optimize children’s development through early education, enrichment activities, and constant supervision undermine the very qualities these efforts aim to cultivate?
10. How has the decline of intergenerational households changed what children understand about aging, death, and their own place in the human lifecycle? What is lost when children grow up mostly around other children and young adults?

PDF: Download a PDF of all the questions