Find Someone Who: 8 Best ESL Activities

I’ve run a version of this activity in classes of six and classes of forty, and the failure mode is always the same: a teacher photocopies a generic worksheet, reads the instructions once, and half the room ends up writing names without ever asking a question. The activity itself isn’t the problem — the grid of unrelated statements is. Below are eight versions built around a single grammar point each, plus the three fixes that stop students from gaming the task.

What Is a Find Someone Who ESL Activity?

A find someone who ESL activity is a structured mingle task: students receive a sheet of first-person statements, convert each one into a question, stand up, and interview classmates until they’ve matched a name to every line. The teacher’s only real job is picking the grammar point and writing eight to ten statements that force a real question — not a yes/no shrug.

What makes it different from a straight pair-work drill is movement and unpredictability. Nobody knows who they’ll talk to next, so the same question gets asked six or seven times in six or seven slightly different ways, which is exactly the kind of repetition-without-boredom that actually builds fluency. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

1. Present Simple: Everyday Habits

This is the version almost every teacher starts with, and it’s the easiest to grade on the fly. Write statements about routines and preferences: “walks to school,” “drinks coffee every morning,” “doesn’t like spicy food.” Students have to form a yes/no question — “Do you walk to school?” — and can only write a name once they get a genuine “yes.”

Push it one level past the yes/no answer by requiring a follow-up: once a student confirms “yes, I drink coffee every morning,” the asker has to get one more detail — how many cups, what time. That single rule turns an eight-question worksheet into forty real exchanges.

2. Past Simple: Life Experiences

Swap the statements to things that already happened: “broke a bone,” “got lost in a foreign city,” “met a celebrity.” The grammar shifts to “Have you ever broken a bone?” if you want present perfect, or keep it simple past with “Did you ever break a bone as a kid?” — pick one tense per sheet so you’re not grading two grammar points at once.

This version produces the best whole-class debrief, because “got lost in a foreign city” almost always has a story behind it. Save five minutes at the end specifically for two or three students to retell what they found out — that’s where the real speaking practice happens, not in the mingle itself.

3. Present Perfect: Have You Ever

“Have you ever…?” is the textbook use case for find someone who, and for good reason — the question form is identical across the entire sheet, so lower-level students can memorize the pattern after the first two exchanges and spend their energy on vocabulary instead of syntax. Use statements with real range: “has ever eaten insects,” “has ever performed on stage,” “has never left their home country.”

Mix in one or two negative statements (“has never tried sushi”) — negatives trip up intermediate students in a way affirmative questions don’t, and this format lets them practice the error in front of a real audience instead of on a worksheet nobody checks.

4. Comparatives and Superlatives

Instead of yes/no criteria, the statements become comparisons students have to find proof for: “has the longest commute in the class,” “has more siblings than you,” “wakes up earlier than you do.” Students ask follow-up questions to compare numbers, then report back who actually wins each category.

This variation runs a little longer than the others — fifteen minutes instead of ten — because comparing numbers means more back-and-forth per conversation. It’s worth the extra time on a day when the lesson is specifically about comparatives, since every other activity format tends to drill the structure in isolated sentences instead of real exchanges.

5. Going To: Future Plans

Statements describe plans, not habits: “is going to travel this summer,” “is going to change jobs,” “is going to learn a new skill next year.” This version works especially well in the first or last week of a term, when students genuinely have plans worth discussing instead of inventing fake ones to fill a grid.

One adjustment that matters here: tell students in advance that it’s fine to say “no, but I’m going to…” and redirect to their own real plan. Forcing students to match an exact statement about their future produces made-up answers; letting the conversation drift to what’s actually true produces better language.

6. Agree or Disagree: Opinions Version

Drop the yes/no criteria entirely and write eight opinion statements instead: “video games are a waste of time,” “cities are better than small towns,” “AI will replace most jobs within ten years.” Students mingle to find someone who agrees and someone who disagrees with each statement, then has to ask “why” and record one reason.

This is the version to run with upper-intermediate and advanced classes who find the habit/experience formats too easy. The grammar target disappears, but the speaking load goes way up — students are now negotiating meaning and defending a position, not just confirming a fact.

7. Bingo Card: Low-Prep Variation

Arrange sixteen short prompts in a 4×4 grid instead of a numbered list — “likes horror movies,” “has a pet,” “speaks three languages” — and the first student to get four names in a row, column, or diagonal calls “bingo.” It’s the same questioning practice with a competitive element, and it needs almost no prep beyond filling in a grid template once.

Bingo format caps the activity naturally once someone wins, which solves the problem of strong students finishing in four minutes and sitting bored for the rest of the period — give the winner a new card and let them keep going while slower groups finish their first one.

8. Virtual Breakout Rooms: Online Version

On Zoom or Google Meet, “mingling” has to be simulated through breakout rooms set to shuffle every three minutes. Share the criteria sheet on screen or in the chat, send students into pairs, and rotate rooms automatically rather than asking students to manually leave and rejoin — manual switching eats more time online than it does in person.

Cut the list to five or six criteria for the online version — a ten-item sheet that takes fifteen minutes in person can eat forty minutes online once you account for breakout-room transition time, and students lose momentum waiting for the next pairing to load.

Where This Activity Falls Apart (And How to Fix It)

Three problems show up in almost every class running this for the first time, and all three have the same root cause: the task lets students skip the actual asking.

Students write names without asking anyone. They glance around the room, guess who probably fits a criteria, and write it down. Fix it by requiring a signature in the student’s own handwriting next to each name — not the asker’s. A name you wrote yourself isn’t proof you spoke to anyone; a signature from the other student is.

The same five students walk the whole room while everyone else answers from their seat. This happens when the teacher doesn’t physically clear the room first. Push desks to the sides, or run the activity standing in a hallway or open space, before handing out a single sheet.

Weaker students get one-word answers and move on. Pair your quietest students with a sentence starter taped to their sheet — “Can you tell me more about…?” — and announce a rule that every confirmed “yes” needs one extra detail before the asker can move to the next person.

Turning the Mingle Into Graded Speaking Practice

Most teachers run this as a free warmer and never look at it again, which wastes a genuinely useful assessment opportunity. Walk the room with a simple three-column checklist — asked the question correctly, got a real answer, recorded a follow-up detail — and you have a fast formative speaking grade for fifteen or twenty students in under ten minutes.

For a slightly heavier version, collect the sheets at the end and have each student write three sentences about what they found out, in the correct tense. That turns a ten-minute speaking warmer into a combined speaking-and-writing task without adding a second activity to the lesson plan.

Pick one grammar point, write eight honest statements instead of generic ones, and clear the floor before you hand out a single sheet — that’s the entire difference between a mingle that produces real language and one that produces forty names nobody actually earned. For more ways to get a quiet class moving and talking, see our ESL icebreaker activities और ESL speaking activities that build real fluency, or pair this with cooperative learning activities for a full lesson built around student-to-student talk.

सूत्रों का कहना है

• ESL Games: Find Someone Who — printable worksheet templates and classroom setup notes.
• BusyTeacher: Mingling Activities and Find Someone Who — a library of mingle-format worksheets across grammar points.
• OnTESOL: Find Someone Who Icebreaker — context on using the activity specifically as a first-lesson icebreaker.

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