Good teaching ideas often come in espresso size. Sometimes a single word is all it takes to get students talking.
Less is more
My today’s post is about espresso dialogues. This is one of the best formats for teachers who believe that less is more in the classroom (alongside one-sentence games, six-word stories, wordless videos, and the like). These dialogues can be used with learners at any proficiency level and are especially useful for practising spoken grammar, particularly elliptical structures.
I’ve already shared ideas and activities based on espresso dialogues here on the blog (check SPOKEN GRAMMAR MATTERS). Since they’ve become a regular ingredient in my teaching toolkit, I thought it was worth adding an Espresso Dialogue function to my ConvoGen to help create dialogues more closely aligned with students’ learning outcomes, speed up brainstorming, and add a bit of variety.
A small toggle that I hope will be as useful to you as it is to me in brewing dialogues for your students.
A quick how-to
After you provide the basic information to keep the generated output relevant to your class, such as the purpose of your activity (‘learning objective’), for example spoken grammar or making suggestions, and the setting, for example two tourists in the Louvre Museum, and your students’ age and level, toggle on ‘Espresso Dialogue’. ConvoGen will then generate an espresso dialogue along with a suggested extended version for your reference.
Just as with other generated dialogues, you can edit the expanded version and copy or save the dialogues as a PDF worksheet, and even generate the audio (How to Use the tool).
If you’re not happy with the result, or need more ideas to pick from, add more relevant details and regenerate the dialogues.
Sample Dialogues
Classroom Activities
Here are a few simple but engaging ways to turn these dialogues into meaningful language practice that encourages creativity and a touch of fun.
Activity 1. Espresso Dialogue → Longer Dialogue
Present the espresso dialogue on the board or screen
and ask students to imagine the situation behind it:
Who are the speakers?
Where are they?
- What‘s happening?
*What happened before this moment?
*How might the situation continue?
Then have students work in pairs or small groups to expand the dialogue and perform them. After each performance, the rest of the class can guess the context.
Once everyone has performed, show the expanded version of the dialogue and discuss how short, elliptical exchanges can grow into longer and more expressive conversations.
Activity 2. Longer Dialogue → Espresso Dialogue
Present the longer dialogue:
Tourist 1: (Expressing amazement) Wow! This room is enormous, isn’t it?
Tourist 2: (Agreeing) Yes, it’s really big! I can’t believe how many paintings there are.
Tourist 1: (Identifying a famous artwork) Is that the Mona Lisa over there?
Tourist 2: (Confirming) Yes! It’s much smaller than I imagined.
Tourist 1: (Observing the crowd) It’s so crowded! I can barely see it.
Tourist 2: (Reacting to the crowd) Really! I thought it would be a bit quieter. Let’s try to get closer, shall we?
Ask students to shorten the dialogue, keeping only the words that still convey the meaning and tone, and then have them perform their ‘espresso’ versions for the class.
After each performance, discuss how students decided which parts to keep or drop, and how those choices affected the dialogue (its tone and clarity).
These activities work great as a warm-up, filler, or mini speaking task, short and engaging enough to hold attention, get everyone talking, and add a good dose of fun.
You can try out the new Espresso Dialogue feature in ConvoGen here, and explore other activities based on espresso stories here.
Happy espresso-ing!
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