Q:

How can I extend Scrabble to increase use of conversational English with non-native speakers?

I am an Australian living in Japan and I just started teaching two parents in their home (they have a three-year old whom I don't teach). In their first lesson, I taught them how to play Scrabble - they had never seen it before, they enjoyed playing it but it did cause long periods of silence as they considered what word to strategically play. I don't want them to think "I enjoy playing this scrabble game with the teacher but I don't think it has any conversational English practice."
How could I encourage more conversational English (and written)? I thought that they could make words with their tiles and create a sentence using each word to prove that they understand or make a possible word and guess how to pronounce it and I will tell them if it exists.

A:

I think Scrabble can be used effectively, but you do want to avoid the "just playing a game" thing. What I tried a few times was to limit the words to those related to a topic we had been studying. I also didn't use a proper Scrabble set, as the point was not to accrue points based on letter limitations, placement benefits, or luck. I did an image search for "Scrabble tiles" and printed out a complete set for each player. Players took turns as usual and we played without a board.
If your focus is on conversational English, you could limit them to "words you'd use in a restaurant" or "polite words" or whatever. Make sure there is a discussion about each word that is played - what does it mean, when would you use it, how is it pronounced, etc.  You might like to try having a stack of cards with a mixture of "pronunciation", "part of speech", "usage example", "definition" or the like: award one point for the person who plays the word, then each player draws a card and gets a point for a correct answer, or the person who plays the word must answer a question to get a point at all.

