Agree or Disagree? 40 Opinion Statements That Spark ESL Conversations

The challenge with most ESL speaking activities is that students can avoid committing to a real position. There is a structural difference between asking "Do you think social media is good?" and saying "Social media does more harm than good." The question allows hedging. The statement demands a position.

Opinion statements - also called "take a stance" or "agree or disagree" prompts - consistently produce stronger, more extended speaking than equivalent questions. Students who might answer a question with a vague "it depends" are forced by a statement to either defend or attack it. That commitment to a position is what generates the argumentation, counter-argumentation, and extended justification that makes speaking practice genuinely useful.

YapYapGo is a classroom speaking practice tool for ESL and EFL teachers with a Debate mode designed for exactly this format - students are assigned a position on a statement and must argue it for 90 seconds. The debate timer handles the structure. But these 40 statements work just as well read aloud or projected.

How to use opinion statements effectively

Assign positions, don't let students choose. When students self-select their position, they choose the one they can defend most easily - which usually means the one requiring the least language. Assigning positions randomly produces harder, more interesting arguments and removes the social awkwardness of publicly declaring a view on a sensitive topic. Require evidence or examples. "I agree because it's true" is not an argument. Add a rule: students must give at least one reason and one example. This simple constraint dramatically increases the quality and length of responses. Use the four-step structure: State position, give one reason, give an example, consider the other side ("However, someone might argue..."). Teach this structure explicitly before using the statements. Follow with partner challenge. After each student makes their argument, their partner has 60 seconds to respond. This prevents the activity from becoming two monologues.

Statements for A2-B1 (concrete, personal)

Keep these grounded in everyday experience. Students at this level have opinions about these topics from lived experience.

1. It is better to have a few close friends than many acquaintances.
2. Students learn more outside school than inside it.
3. Animals should not be kept as pets.
4. Social media makes people less happy.
5. Learning English is more important than learning any other foreign language.
6. Children should be allowed to choose their own bedtime.
7. It is always wrong to lie, even to protect someone's feelings.
8. Public transport should be free for everyone.
9. People are kinder online than they are in person.
10. Money is the most important factor in choosing a career.

Teaching tip: At A2, provide sentence frames on the board before students begin: "I agree because..." / "I disagree because..." / "One example is..." / "However, some people think..." These frames reduce the cognitive load and let students focus on content rather than construction.

Statements for B1-B2 (opinion and reasoning)

These require students to form opinions on social and cultural questions beyond their immediate personal experience.

1. Social media influencers have more impact on young people than teachers do.
2. University education should be free for everyone.
3. Cities are better places to live than the countryside.
4. Working from home is better for employees than working in an office.
5. Exam results are not a good measure of intelligence.
6. People who litter should pay large fines.
7. It is the government's responsibility to ensure everyone eats healthily.
8. Sport is just as important as academic subjects in school.
9. It is better to travel and experience the world than to save money for the future.
10. Technology has made people lazier.
11. Parents should be allowed to read their teenage children's messages.
12. Fast food restaurants should display calorie counts by law.
13. Languages will disappear as English becomes the global standard.
14. People are more influenced by advertising than they realise.
15. It is impossible to be truly environmentally friendly in the modern world.

Tool tip: YapYapGo's Debate mode displays the statement, assigns "for" and "against" positions, and runs a countdown timer for each speaking turn. After the timer, pairs can have free discussion. A random student picker works well for sharing the best arguments with the class afterwards.

Statements for B2-C1 (abstract and systemic)

These require students to think about systems, structures, and abstract principles. They work best with B2 and above.

1. Progress is impossible without inequality.
2. Democracy is the least bad system of government, not a good one.
3. Artificial intelligence will do more harm than good to society.
4. The purpose of education is to serve the economy, not the individual.
5. Freedom of speech should have limits.
6. The most important quality in a leader is not intelligence but integrity.
7. Climate change cannot be solved by individual choices - only systemic change will work.
8. The internet has done more to divide society than unite it.
9. Success is 90% luck and 10% effort.
10. Patriotism is just a polite word for tribalism.
11. The global spread of English is a form of cultural imperialism.
12. Economic growth and environmental sustainability are fundamentally incompatible.
13. Privacy is already dead - people have just not accepted it yet.
14. The world would be more peaceful without religion.
15. The most dangerous form of ignorance is confident ignorance.

Managing sensitive topics

Some statements above (particularly 36-40) touch on topics that could cause genuine offence or discomfort. A few guidelines:

Know your class. What flies in an adult professional class in a cosmopolitan city may land very differently in a teenage class in a conservative community. Choose statements that will generate productive disagreement, not genuine upset. The assigned position protects students. When students are arguing an assigned position, they can always clarify "this isn't my personal view." This is one of the strongest arguments for random position assignment in debate activities. Skip statements that touch on students' own identities. Statement 39 about religion, for example, may be completely appropriate in one context and deeply inappropriate in another. Use your judgement.

A conversation topic generator is useful for warming up before the debate statements. For a related format that generates similar energy with lower stakes, see our post on would you rather questions for ESL. For the full guide to running classroom debates, see how to run a classroom debate with ESL students.

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Sources:

• Stapleton, P. (2001). Assessing Critical Thinking in Writing. Written Communication. - Argumentation tasks produce more complex language than discussion tasks.
• Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. - Opinion commitment increases output quantity and quality.
• Nation, I.S.P. (1989). Improving Speaking Fluency. System. - Structured speaking tasks with clear goals build fluency faster than open formats.