100+ Easy Would You Rather Questions for ESL Students

July 2026  ·  7 categories  ·  100+ questions

Ask a class of learners "what did you do at the weekend?" and half the room will look at the floor. Ask the same room whether they would rather eat rice or bread, and hands go up before you have finished the sentence. That gap is the whole reason would you rather questions for ESL students have quietly become one of the most reliable low-prep speaking activities in language teaching: the question does the hard work of starting the conversation, so the learner only has to supply the English.

The activity needs nothing. No handout, no cutting up cards, no login, no interactive whiteboard that decided to update itself five minutes before the lesson. You read two options aloud, learners choose one, and then they explain why. That last step is where the language happens, and it is why this beats most warm-ups: a choice creates a reason, and a reason creates a sentence.

What follows is a graded set of 105 questions organised by CEFR level, from A1 questions built entirely out of high-frequency words to B2+ prompts that will keep an adult class arguing for ten minutes. Before the lists, you'll find the grammar the activity actually teaches, the sentence frames to write on the board, and five ways to run it depending on how much time and space you have.

Why It Works for Language Learners

It forces output, not just recognition. Most classroom time is comprehensible input — listening, reading, checking answers. Learners need input, but they also need the uncomfortable moment of producing language under mild pressure, because that is when they notice the gap between what they want to say and what they can say. A would you rather question creates that moment in about four seconds, and creates it repeatedly.

It gives learners a reason to speak. This is the difference between a real speaking activity and a drill. "Tell me about your family" is an instruction; "which one would you choose, and why?" is a genuine question with an answer the teacher does not already know. Information-gap logic applies even to opinions: because nobody in the room knows what you will pick, everyone actually listens.

The anxiety cost is close to zero. Affective filter is not just theory — you can watch it operate. There is no wrong answer, so a learner cannot lose face by choosing. Even at A1, a learner who says only "bread" has produced a complete, successful, socially appropriate contribution. Once they have contributed once, contributing again is far easier, and that is usually the bottleneck with quiet classes.

It repeats a target structure without feeling like repetition. Every answer naturally uses the same frame — "I would rather ___ because ___" — so across ten questions a learner produces the structure ten times with ten different lexical fillers. That is a substitution drill in disguise, except learners are choosing the content themselves, which is precisely the condition under which structures stick.

It scales to any level with the same instructions. The teaching move never changes; only the questions and the expected output do. A1 learners answer with a noun. A2 learners produce a full sentence with because. B1 learners compare two options and justify. B2 learners concede a point before disagreeing. You can run the identical activity in a beginner class at nine and an advanced class at eleven and use the same board layout for both.

It is genuinely mixed-ability friendly. In a class where levels vary — which is most classes — a stronger learner and a weaker learner can answer the same question at different depths without anyone being publicly outpaced. You simply ask the stronger learner a follow-up question, and the difficulty scales privately.

The Language It Teaches

The activity is not just fun filler. It has a real grammar target, and naming that target out loud is what turns a game into a lesson stage you can justify in a plan or an observation.

The would rather structure itself. This is a genuinely awkward form for learners: it takes a bare infinitive (I would rather go, never I would rather to go), it contracts to 'd rather in speech, and the negative is I'd rather not. Learners meet it in coursebooks, produce it twice, and forget it. Forty repetitions in a fifteen-minute activity fixes that more effectively than any exercise.

Comparatives and preference verbs. Answers pull in better, more, less, easier, cheaper, more interesting, plus the whole preference family: prefer, like … more than, enjoy. At A2 this is exactly the language learners need and rarely get to use spontaneously.

Because-clauses and basic subordination. Most low-level learners speak in strings of simple sentences. Requiring a reason forces one subordinate clause every single turn, which is the first real step towards complex sentences. Push slightly further and you get so, but, although, and even though without ever presenting them formally.

Opinion and hedging phrases. At B1 and above, the interesting language is the softening: I think, for me, it depends, probably, I'd say, I see your point, but. These are the phrases that make a learner sound fluent rather than merely correct, and they only appear when there is something to have an opinion about.

Sentence frames to put on the board

A1: "I like ___."  /  "___, please."  /  "I want ___."
A2: "I would rather ___ because ___."  /  "I prefer ___ because it is ___."
B1: "I'd rather ___ than ___ because ___."  /  "For me, ___ is better because ___."
B2+: "It depends on ___, but on balance I'd rather ___."  /  "I can see why you'd choose ___, however ___."

Leave the frame visible for the whole activity. Learners who would otherwise stay silent will speak if the shape of the sentence is already on the wall — the frame removes the risk of getting the grammar wrong, which is the thing they are actually afraid of.

How to Run It (5 Formats)

1. Pair work with a partner swap — 8 to 12 minutes. Give each pair three questions. Two minutes to discuss all three, then everyone changes partner and repeats the same three questions with a new person. The repetition is the point: the second telling is always faster, more fluent and better structured than the first, and learners can feel the improvement. Finish with two minutes of whole-class feedback where you board three good sentences and two errors.

2. Four corners / vote with your feet — 5 to 8 minutes. Option A on the left wall, option B on the right. Read a question, learners walk. Once they have moved, ask two learners on each side to justify their position. This gets bodies moving after a long grammar stage, and it is brilliant for teenagers who will not raise a hand but will happily walk. It also gives you an instant visual read of the whole class.

3. Chain speaking — 6 to 10 minutes. Learner A answers, then asks the next learner the following question on the list. Around a circle of twelve, everyone speaks twice: once answering, once asking. The asking turn is the hidden value here, because forming the question is harder than answering it and learners almost never get to practise it.

4. Write, then speak — 12 to 15 minutes. Learners write their answers to five questions in full sentences first, you circulate and correct quietly on their page, and only then do they speak in pairs. This is the format for anxious classes, for exam preparation groups, and for any class where accuracy matters as much as fluency. Rehearsed speech buys enormous confidence, and the written record gives you something to assess.

5. Teacher versus class — 4 to 6 minutes. You take a side and defend it, and the class has to argue you out of it. Because you are modelling the target language at natural speed, learners get high-quality input and a reason to interrupt. It is the fastest of the five formats and the best emergency warm-up when a lesson finishes early.

Whichever format you choose, hold error correction until the end. Correcting mid-sentence at the fluency stage teaches learners that speaking is dangerous — exactly the belief this activity exists to dismantle.

105 Graded Would You Rather Questions for ESL Students

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For Young Learners vs Adults

Young learners (roughly 5 to 12). Keep both options visible and concrete — a picture, a flashcard, or the two objects held up in your hands — and accept a pointed finger or a single word as a complete answer. Movement helps enormously at this age, so use the four-corners format rather than pair work. Silly options work better than sensible ones: children will argue passionately about a pet dragon and shrug at a job with good holidays. Repeat the same five questions across several lessons; young learners like the security of a familiar routine, and the repetition is doing quiet grammar work. Ten questions is usually one too many, so stop while they still want more.

Teenagers. The main risk is that the questions feel childish, so lean on the B1 choices list and anything with a real trade-off. Voting with their feet works far better than raising a hand, because teenagers will move when they will not volunteer. Adding a scoring element — best argument wins the round — turns a warm-up into something they take seriously.

Adults. Adults want to know why they are doing an activity, so tell them: this is the would rather structure plus opinion language, and you will board their errors at the end. Skip the silly questions with professional or exam classes and start at A2 daily life or B1 travel and work, which connect directly to the English they actually need. Business groups respond well to the work questions and to the B2+ discussion starters, especially the ones about remote work and AI. One-to-one, a single question is often the fastest possible warm-up: you take the opposite side and the lesson has started inside sixty seconds.

If you also teach a general subject class rather than a language class, the same activity works as a settling routine — that version is covered in our classroom questions collection, which is aimed at native-speaker groups rather than language learners.

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