Thanksgiving is all about good food, time with family and saying thank you. Even if your students don’t celebrate it, you can easily bring it into the classroom and talk about special dinners, describe pictures of festive tables, and think about what we are thankful for. This year, I decided to turn all of that into exam practice with a no-prep B1 Thanksgiving speaking exam, written in the style of the Cambridge PET. It is a cosy, low-stress way to celebrate Thanksgiving in class.
So, here is the catch – my students don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Most of them have never had a turkey dinner or watched a parade, so I wanted a lesson that works without any background knowledge. The vocabulary is B1-friendly, the pictures are easy to talk about, and the questions are about family, food and special days. Whether your students know Thanksgiving well or have never heard of it, they can take part.
This is a fun way of explaining the rules of the PET speaking exam while bringing a bit of Thanksgiving spirit into the classroom. At the end of this post, you can find the printable examiner’s speaking guide (all speaking prompts included!). So, keep scrolling to download the examiner’s notes and the presentation.
Warmer: Thanksgiving Vocabulary
This warm-up is not part of the real exam, but it makes the speaking tasks much easier. Before the exam starts, students are introduced to eight Thanksgiving words: turkey, November, pumpkin, dessert, parade, autumn, recipe and thankful. Read out the short definitions and let students guess the words. This gives them useful vocabulary to use later, when they describe the pictures, plan a menu and share their opinions.
Part 1: Thanksgiving Questions
Part 1 is the ice breaker of the exam. Students answer short, personal questions about Thanksgiving, family celebrations, food and cooking. The questions are easy and familiar, so they help students relax, get used to speaking and start using the new vocabulary. I usually skip the introductory phase of Part 1 because it is very repetitive, and go straight to the questions. Some of them include Did you help in the kitchen when you were a child?, Have you ever cooked a meal for a lot of people? and What are you thankful for this year? There are eight questions in this part, and no one needs to know anything about Thanksgiving to answer them.
Part 2: Describe a Thanksgiving Picture
In Part 2, students talk individually about a picture for about one minute. This usually means a short description and some speculation about the situation. To keep things interesting, I’ve prepared four different pictures: a family having a Thanksgiving dinner, a family preparing a turkey in the kitchen, people watching a parade, and a table full of Thanksgiving food and decorations. Put one minute on the clock and let your students have a go.
Part 3: Pair Speaking
Now it’s time for the collaborative part of the exam. Students are given a scenario: they are organising a special dinner for their friends. They have several dishes to consider and need to decide together which three would make the best menu. This task gives students plenty of chances to make suggestions, agree and disagree politely, give reasons and reach a decision. If you want another version of Part 3, there is also an optional task. Students imagine that their group wants to do something good for the community. They are given several ideas, from collecting food to cleaning up a park, and need to choose the best one. For both tasks, students have 15 seconds to look at the pictures and then about 2 minutes to discuss them.
Part 4: Opinions About Special Days
Finally, students move on to the opinion-based questions. This is where the lesson becomes more open-ended, and students can explain what they think and justify their answers. The questions cover topics such as whether we should have special days, eating meat at celebrations, cooking at home or going to a restaurant, spending holidays alone, family arguments at big dinners, thanking people every day and spending too much money on holidays. There are no right or wrong answers here, so encourage students to give reasons and examples.
Feedback: Making Exam Practice Useful
Even though this is a themed lesson, I still want my students to leave with useful exam feedback. Before you start, remind them what you are listening for and ask them to pay attention to their classmates. At the end of the lesson, give feedback on their speaking and, if you’re working with a group, let them share some positive comments with each other.
I like using themed speaking exams because they show students that exam preparation doesn’t always have to feel serious and repetitive. They can describe pictures, answer questions, discuss ideas and reach decisions while talking about something different from their usual exam topics. So, if you’re teaching B1 exam preparation around Thanksgiving, why not turn your next speaking practice into a celebration with this B1 Thanksgiving speaking exam?
What would your perfect special dinner look like?
