Leisure and activities

 What type of films do you usually like to watch?

 What types of books do you usually like to read?
 What type of series do you like to watch?
 What do you do in your spare time?
 What sports do you like to do?
 Do you go running in your free time?
 Who do you like to spend your free time with?
 How much free time do you get each week?
 Do you think you get enough free time?
 Would you like more free time?
 Do you think you could be busier?
 How do you like to organise your time?
 What sweets and drinks do you like to order at the cinema?
 Do you do different activities with your girl friends to with your boy
friends?

Leisure and activities – past tense

 When was the last time you went to the cinema?

 What was the last film you saw?
 What was the last book you read?
 What did you do to relax yesterday?
 What was the last sport you did?
 Who was the last friend you saw? What did you do?

Leisure and activities – the conditional tense

 If you could play any sport, what sport would you play?
 If you could be good at any musical instrument, which one would you like
to play?
 If you could speak any language with no effort, which language would you
speak?
 If you had free time right now what would you want to do?
 If you could have written any book what would you want to have written?
 If you could star in any movie, which movie would you like to star in?
 If you could be good at any activity what would you want to be good at?
 If you could win any competition, which competition would you like to
win?
Holidays

 Where do you usually go on holiday?

 What is the best holiday you’ve ever gone on?
 Where would you like to go on holiday?
 If you could visit any country in the world where would you go?
 Where are you going on your next holiday?
 Do you prefer hotels or air bnbs?
 Do you prefer the beach or the mountains?
 Do you prefer the city or the countryside?
 Do you like to organise your own activities or book through a tour
company?
 What do you usually do on holiday?
 Do you prefer to relax or do activities when you’re on holiday?
 Who do you usually go on holiday with?
 Do you prefer holidays to hot countries or to cold countries?
 When you’re on holiday do you like to eat the local food or do you prefer
to find tourist restaurants?
 If you could go on holiday with anyone who would you go with?
 Do you like to speak the local language when you go on holiday?
 Do you prefer all inclusive or self catered?
 What’s the furthest away county that you’ve ever visited?
 What has been your best holiday?
 What has been your worst holiday?

The immediate Future

 What are you going to have for dinner?

 What time will you finish work today?
 What are your plans for tomorrow?
 What are your plans for the weekend?
 When is the next time you are going to see friends?
 When is the next date you have?
 When is the next time you plan on doing some exercise?
 What is the next book you would like to read?
 What is the next film you would like to see?
 What is the next series you would like to watch?
 When are you next going to the cinema?
 When is the next time you’ll be going to a restaurant?
Long term future

 What would you like to achieve before you’re forty?

 What would you like to achieve before you’re fifty?
 What would you like to achieve before you die?
 Do you want to climb a mountain at some point in your life?
 When do you want to buy your first house?
 What kind of house do you want to live in when you’re older?
 What skills would you like to develop as your get older?
 How much money would you like when you’re older?
 Do you want to have a simple life or an expensive life?

Career Future

 What would you like to do when you’re older?

 Where do you see yourself in five years time?
 What age do you want to retire at?
 Do you want to manage a team?
 How do you plan on getting to where you want to go in your career?
 Do you want to work for yourself or for somebody else?
 Are there any skills you will have to learn for your career in the future?
 How do you see your industry changing in the future with new
technologies?
 Is your job at risk as the world moves to be more technology based?
 What is the highest position you can achieve in your chosen profession?

Family and relationship future

 Do you want to get married?

 When will you get married?
 Do you want to have a big wedding or a small wedding?
 Who will be at your wedding
 Do you want a traditional wedding or a more modern wedding?
 Do you want to have a religious or a non religious wedding?
 Do you want to have children?
 When will you have children?
 Will you raise your children to be religious?
 How many children do you want to have?
 Will you send your children to private school or state school?
Travel and personal goals future

 What is the next country you want to visit?

 What is the next holiday you have booked?
 Who will you go on holiday with next?
 Do you have any plans to visit South America?
 Do you want to visit Africa in the future?
 Do you want to visit Europe?
 What country do you want to visit before you die?
 Do you have any long term trips planned?
 What skills do you want to learn when you have more time?
 What foreign languages do you want to learn in the future?
 Do you want to learn how to play a musical instrument?
 Do you want to start doing a new sport?
 Do you want to change your diet and lifestyle in the future?
 Do you want to do more to help the environment in the future?
 What car do you want to buy when you have more money?
 What kind of things do you want to do when you have more money?

Realistic questions

 If you could have any job in the world what would it be?
 What are you career goals?
 What are your educational goals?
 What are your personal goals?
 What are your relationship goals?
 Where would you like to live?
 How many children would you like to have?
 What would you like to do when you’re older?
 What countries would you like to visit?
 What pets would you like?
 What would you like to study?
 Describe your dream house?
 What goals do you currently have in your career or education?
 Would you like to design and build your own house or would you rather
buy one already made?
 If you were rich would you like to choose your own clothes or would you
like to hire a personal shopper to dress you?
 What languages would you like to learn?
 What kind of car would you like to have?
 Would you like to win the lottery or would you rather earn your money?
  What is the biggest goal you have in your life?
 Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
 What does a goal mean to you?
 what goals have you managed to achieve in your life?
 Are there any goals you feel you have failed or given up on? If so then
why?
 Which type of goals do you think are the most important? Financial,
educational, work or personal? And why?
 What financial goals do you have?
 How are you planning financially for your future?
 By when would you like to retire?
 How would you define a goal?
 Do you think there is any difference between a goal and a dream? If so
what is the difference?
 How do you think people can go about finding out what their goals are?
 How do you think people can go about achieving their goals?
 If you had to write a bucket list of all the things you wanted to do before
you died what would be on the bucket list?

Questions you can ask someone to help them realise what their goals are
Work

 What do you like doing in your free time?

 When you’re in work and you imagine yourself doing something else,
what is it that you’re imagining?
 Do you prefer to work alone or in a team?
 Do you prefer to receive instruction from someone or to do your own
thing?
 Do you like to work with your hands or do you prefer using computers?
 Do you think of yourself as more of a logical person or as a creative
person?
 Are you a morning person or an evening person?
 What kind of management style do you prefer?
 Are you someone who seeks praise from others or feels praise from
yourself when you know you’ve done a good job?

Relationships

 Do you prefer to be single or in a relationship?

 What kind of qualities do you think are important in a partner?
  When you are in a relationship do you like to do everything with that
person or do you prefer to spend more time by yourself?
 Do you want to have children? If so how many?
 How would you feel if your partner didn’t want to have children?
 If your partner had to move to a foreign country for work would you
consider going with them?
 Do you see yourself getting married some day or do you not believe in
marriage?

Financial goals

 What does being financially secure mean to you?

 How important do you think it is to be financially secure?
 How important do you think it is to save for a pension?
 Would you like to own your own house or are you happy renting a house?
 Could you see yourself investing in stocks and shares or would you prefer
to save your money in a bank account?
 How do you feel about having a passive income?
 How would you go about achieving a passive income?
 When do you think you should start saving for your future?
 Do you think it’s ever too early or too late to start saving money?
 What would you spend your rainy day fund on?
 How much money do you think people should have in their rainy day fund?
 What does being financially independent mean to you?

Fantasy questions
Maybe these ESL conversation questions don’t count as hopes and dreams, but
it’s always fun to add a little fantasy to a language exchange.

 What would you do with $1,000,000?

 Would you prefer to be rich or famous?
 If you could live anywhere in the world where would you like to live?
 Would you prefer to make a difference in the world or would you prefer to
be adored?
 Would you rather have a unicorn or a dragon?
 Would you rather fight a troll or an ogre?
 Would you rather be able to fly or have super strength?
 If you could solve one problem in the world what would you like to solve?
 Would you rather be a prince/princess or a knight?
English Technology Questions
 What has been the most useful technological advance in the past 100
years?
 What has been the biggest technological change in your lifetime?
 Which piece of technology do you find most useful in your day to day life?
 How will technology help to make our lives easier in the next ten years?
 If you had to give up all technology from your life apart from one thing,
what would you choose to keep?
 If you could upload your memories to the cloud, would you?
 What jobs will be lost due to technological advances?
 Do you think there are any jobs that could never be replaced by robotics?
 What are some of the disadvantages of computers and the internet?
 What are some of the advantages of mobile phones?
 Do you think young people spend too much time on their phones and in
the house compared to earlier generations?
 Could technology be causing a rise in obesity? If so how? And how can we
combat that?

English Robots and AI Questions

 Do you think robots will cause the loss of jobs?

 Do you think robots and machines have caused the loss of jobs?
 How do you feel about robots that look like humans?
 Do you think there could be any problems with developing AI?
 Would you trust a self driving car or self driving bus?
 Do you think one day robots will be able to perform surgery better than
humans?
 Do you think AI will ever be advanced enough that the robots will be able
to think and feel for themselves?

English Space Questions

 If you had the opportunity to travel into space would you?

 Do you think space travel will ever be available commercially?
 Do you believe that there is life in our solar system?
 Do you believe that there is life in the universe?
 Do you think people will be able to inhabit and populate Mars?
 If you had the opportunity to go to Mars, would you go?
 Do you think space travel will ever be commercially viable?
 What is it that makes space travel so expensive currently?
English Time travel Questions

 Do you think time travel will ever be possible?

 Do you think travelling back in time could have negative effects on the
future?
 If you could travel to any stage in time where would you go?
 What are some of the benefits of being able to travel in time?
 If you could travel forward in time to see how you died, would you do it or
would you rather not know?
 What are some of the risks of time travel?

English Medicine Questions

 Do you think one day we will be able to cure cancer?

 Do you think one day we will be able to merge two sperms, or two eggs to
form a baby? Or do you think we will necessarily need an egg and a
sperm?
 What has been the biggest medicinal advance?
 Do you think people should be allowed to choose the sex or race of their
baby before it’s born?
 Do you think people should be able to choose physical characteristics of
their baby before it’s born, such as eye and hair colour, or height?
 Do you think we will ever have technology that allows us to live forever?
 Do you think we will ever have technology to stop ourselves from aging?
 Do you think medicine will ever be able to extend a woman’s fertility
indefinitely?
 If you could choose any disease to cure which would it be and why?
 Do you think it’s fair that some countries have better access to medicinal
advances than other countries? How can we fix this?

English Animals Questions

 Do you think we should be able to clone animals?

 Do you think we should bring back animals like dinosaurs and the wooly
mammoth?
 Do you think we should interbreed animals such a the liger (lion + tiger)?
 If you could bring your pet back from the dead would you?

English Food Questions

 Do you think we have sufficient technology to end world hunger? If so,

why haven’t we done it yet?
  Would you eat GMO meat or vegetables?
 What issues do you think there are with GMO meat and vegetables?
 Would you eat meat that was grown in a laboratory and didn’t come from
an animal?
 What do you think the future of farming looks like?
 How will robots and machinery be able to help farming in the future?

English Gaming Questions

 How do you see the world of gaming changing with advanced in

technology?
 Do you think one day it will be possible for us all to play in a virtual reality
like in ready player one?
 Do you think the world of gaming will move completely online and people
will no longer play single player games?

Questions about work – general

 What do you do for work?

 What would you like to be when you’re older?
 What do you do on a day to day basis in work?
 How many people do you work with?
 How many people are in your team?
 Are you responsible for anyone else?
 Do you like your boss?
 Do you ever take sick days?
 Do you find interviews easy or difficult?
 What is the most difficult thing about your job?
 What is the easiest thing about your job?
 Do you regret your career choice? Would you like to change it?
 Do you tend to get stressed at work or are you more relaxed?
 What industry do you work in?
 Do you ever want to quit your job and travel the world?

Either or questions about work

 Do you prefer to move about at work or stay at a desk?

 Do you prefer to work in the morning or the afternoon?
 Do you prefer to be managed or work alone?
 Do you prefer to travel for work or stay in your own country?
 Do you prefer to work in a small team or a big team?
 Do you prefer to wear smart clothes to work or casual clothes to work?
Questions about work in the past tense

 Tell me about the worst boss you’ve ever had?

 Tell me about the best boss you’ve ever had?
 When was the last time you took a sick day?
 What was the last job interview you had for? How did it go?
 How many job interviews have you had?
 What was your worst interview?
 Who is the best person you’ve ever worked with? Do you miss them? Do
you still talk to them?
 What did you do in work yesterday?
 When has been the busiest you’ve ever been in work?
 When has been the most stressed you’ve ever been in work?

Questions about work using the conditional tense

 If you could do any job in the world what would you do?
 If you could work in any country in the world where would you work?
 If you could have any boss in the world who would you want to have as
your boss?
 If you could work in any industry, which industry would you like to work
in?
 If you could change one thing about your job what would it be?