Let's Talk About New Year (A1/A2)-Beginner to Intermediate ESL Listening & Speaking Audio Conversation Lesson

Happy New Year 2025!

I know some teachers in the US are just getting back after the winter break, but Christmas isn't celebrated where I am, so except for getting New Year's Day off, everything is pretty much business as usual.

A couple of my ESL students asked if I could teach a lesson on how to talk about New Year and New Year's activities for our last class of 2024, as many previous New Year's conversations with their English-speaking colleagues in the office usually go something like this:

English-speaking colleague: Happy New Year!

ESL student: Happy New Year!

*Silence*

-Conversation ends-

So I made an addition to my Seasonal Conversations in English lesson bundle titled, "Let's Talk About New Year."

Like my other Seasonal Conversations in English lessons, this lesson starts with a brief one-page introduction to the holiday:

This is followed by a short conversation between two people who discuss New Year's activities, New Year's resolutions, and new beginnings for the new year. The conversation slides all have embedded audio files which can be played by clicking on the blue icon in the top left corner:

There is also a slide with an audio file for the entire conversation:

For beginner-level students, I tend to play the conversation line by line first so they can read along with the attached transcript before listening to the whole conversation, but for more advanced students, I usually play the entire conversation first (without letting them look at the transcript) and then play individual audio files as needed for sentences with more difficult phrases or pronunciations.

The lesson slideset also includes definitions for important phrases as well as additional speaking practice questions:

The lesson slides don't usually take more than 10 minutes to go through, which leaves a lot of time for students to practice their speaking on the Additional Practice questions. For my classes with 6-8 students, I like to break students off into pairs to discuss the questions first before bringing everyone back to go through the questions again together. For classes with 3-4 people, I usually go around the class with each question so everyone gets the opportunity to answer the questions before we break off into free discussions for the last 10 minutes of the lesson.

This lesson contains:

• A 5-page Teacher's Guide (PDF)
• A 27-page lesson slideset (PowerPoint) which includes 10 conversation slides, 6 definition slides, and 3 additional practice slides
• A 2-page printable Student Notes file (PDF) which includes the conversation transcript and one page for taking notes

Click here to buy this lesson on TPT.

Click here to see my other Seasonal Conversations in English lessons on TPT.

Click here to buy the Seasonal Conversations in English lesson bundle on TPT.