Find Someone Who: Adaptations and Variations for Every ESL Level

Find Someone Who is one of the most reliable speaking activities in ELT - not because it's flashy, but because it forces every student to speak to every other student in a short period of time. In 10 minutes, each student may have brief conversations with six or eight classmates. That's more varied interaction than most speaking activities produce in twice the time.

The problem is that it's often run at its most basic level: a worksheet with prompts, students circulate and tick names. Done well, it produces genuine, extended interaction. Done poorly, it produces a yes/no questionnaire with no actual language practice.

YapYapGo is a classroom speaking practice tool for ESL and EFL teachers. Find Someone Who works well as a warm-up before any structured pair activity - students arrive already talking, which reduces the standing-start problem of cold pair work. Here's the full guide to making it genuinely productive at every level.

The rules that make it work

The follow-up rule. When a student finds a match ("Yes, I have been to Japan"), they must ask at least two follow-up questions before moving on. "When did you go?" "What was the most interesting thing about it?" Without this rule, the activity collapses into name-collecting. The no-repeat rule. Students cannot ask the same person two questions in a row. They must move to a new person. This maximises the number of different interactions. The genuine conversation rule. When two students discover an interesting match, they're allowed to spend longer. The list is a starting point, not a rigid script.

A2 prompts (concrete, personal)

• Find someone who woke up before 7am today.
• Find someone who can cook a dish from another culture.
• Find someone who has more than one sibling.
• Find someone who has never eaten sushi.
• Find someone who walked here today.
• Find someone who has visited more than three countries.
• Find someone who doesn't like a food that most people enjoy.
• Find someone who learned something new last week.

Language focus: basic question forms (Do you...? Have you ever...? Can you...?), short answers, simple follow-ups.

B1 prompts (opinions and experiences)

• Find someone who thinks social media has made people lonelier.
• Find someone who has changed their mind about something important in the last year.
• Find someone who would prefer to work from home full-time.
• Find someone who has learned a new skill as an adult.
• Find someone who disagrees with a common cultural belief in their country.
• Find someone who has had a job they really didn't enjoy.
• Find someone who spends money differently from their parents.
• Find someone who thinks their generation faces harder challenges than their parents' did.

Language focus: opinion expressions, past tense narrative, comparison language.

Tool tip: After the mingle, YapYapGo takes the topics that generated the most energy and runs structured pair discussion on them. A classroom countdown timer signals the transition clearly so the activity doesn't drift.

B2-C1 prompts (abstract opinions)

• Find someone who thinks economic growth and environmental sustainability are genuinely incompatible.
• Find someone who has changed their opinion about something because of a book or article.
• Find someone who believes social media is making democracy less stable.
• Find someone who thinks the world is, overall, getting better rather than worse.
• Find someone who would give up a significant salary increase for more free time.
• Find someone who thinks talent is more innate than developed.
• Find someone who believes most people are fundamentally selfish.
• Find someone who thinks the education system in their country is fundamentally broken.

Language focus: hedging, concession, extended justification. Follow-up questions should push for specificity: "Can you give me an example?" "What made you reach that view?"

Variations that change the activity significantly

Find someone who disagrees with you

Students start with their own opinion on five statements, then find someone who holds the opposite view on each one. Forces direct engagement with disagreement and requires students to articulate and defend positions.

Find someone who knows something you don't

Students prepare two facts about a topic (their country, their job, a hobby). They find someone who didn't know those facts and teaches them. The "teaching" format generates extended explanation language.

The detective version

No prompts given. Students receive one secret fact about themselves on a card ("You have lived in three different countries"). Other students have five minutes to discover everyone's secret through questioning. More game-like, suitable for first lessons.

Find someone who (reporting version)

After the mingle, students report the most interesting thing they found out: "I discovered that Yuki believes technology is making us less creative, and her main reason was..." Adds a summarising layer that practises reported speech.

Reporting back

Spend three minutes in whole-class report-back. Ask for the story behind the match, not just the name: "You found someone who thinks economic growth and sustainability are incompatible - can you tell us their argument in one sentence?"

A random student picker selects students fairly for sharing. An activity timer labelled "Mingle" gives the circulation phase a visible endpoint that students can see from across the room. For follow-up pair discussion on the topics that emerged, YapYapGo's Topic Discussion mode provides structured continuation. For more mingle formats, see speed conversation activities for ESL.

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Sources:

• Long, M. (1996). The Role of the Linguistic Environment in Second Language Acquisition. Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. - Multiple conversational partners create more acquisition opportunities than fixed-pair work.
• Mackey, A. (1999). Input, Interaction, and Second Language Development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. - Varied interaction partners accelerate acquisition.
• Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press. - Task design for purposeful speaking in mingle formats.