River conversation questions for ESL
A free discussion worksheet about rivers – there are also some river idioms at the bottom of the page.
Before starting this activity, check that your students know the meanings of these words – leisure, flood, dam, polluted, hydropower, form (verb), environmental, stream, whitewater, rafting, river mouth, and endangered. In case any readers don’t know, the longest river in the world is the Nile River and the end of a river is called it’s mouth.
The river conversation questions are –
What is the longest river in your home country?
How many rivers in other countries can you think of?
What is the closest river to your home? Can people swim in it?
Why do you think people like to live near rivers?
How are rivers useful to people? What leisure activities can you do on or in rivers?
Which river in the world would you most like to see?
Does your country have any large rivers that flood? Are there any dams on it?
What things cause rivers to be polluted? What can we do to clean up rivers?
What animals do you know of that live in the Amazon river?
Do you prefer rivers or beaches? Why so?
What kinds of river transport have you used?
How can rivers be dangerous to people?
What environmental effects do dams have? What do you think of hydropower?
How do rivers form? Where do rivers get their water from?
What kinds of jobs can people do on rivers?
What is the difference between a stream and a river?
Have you tried whitewater rafting? Would you like to?
What is the longest river in the world?
What do you call the end of a river where it meets the sea?
Have you ever seen or caught a fish in a river? How big was it?
What would the world be like if there were no rivers?
What is the most beautiful river you have ever seen?
How can a river die? How does a dying river affect the rest of the environment?
Do you know of any endangered animals that live in rivers?
River Idioms
Here are a few English idioms about rivers to share with your students after they have completed discusssing the river conversation questions.
If a person’s complaints are not important or rather trivial, people will often use the expression cry me a river as a form of sarcasm.
If you sell someone down a river you betray them for your own gain.
If someone is up the river they are in prison.
