Great Conversation Starter Questions For Every Situation

Are you comfortable with walking up to someone and starting a conversation? Can you get people talking again when they have descended into eerie silence? If you answered ‘no’ to either of these questions, you might benefit from learning a few more conversation starter questions.

Don’t worry! You are in good company as many people do not feel themselves to be a natural conversation starter; questions many people can quickly think of often seem boring or inappropriate.

The ability to be able to make good conversation easily relies upon being able to ask the right questions at the right time in order to stimulate discussion. And the good news is that you can learn the art of starting a conversation and build up your own little stock of conversation starter questions which will give you a helping hand in many situations.

With the right conversation starter questions you will find it easy to begin conversations with people and this will really boost your confidence. The questions should be quite simple ones so that people can understand them and feel that they are able to answer them. Most of the useful questions that you can ask are open questions.

However, it is fine to ask closed questions so long as they are on a topic which evoke feelings, since then they are unlikely to be met simply with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ in answer.

Which questions you use may differ according to the situation and the person you are talking to, so the conversation starter questions have been loosely grouped into certain situations, in order to give you some guidance.

Conversation Starter Questions Appropriate for Talking to Clerks and Other Staff:

1. Has business been busy today?
2. Have you worked here long?

To Your Neighbor on an Airplane:

1. Do you fly very often?
2. Are you going on vacation or for business?

To a Classmate:

1. Are you enjoying the class?
2. I wonder what the exams will be like?
3. What do you think the tutor will be like?

To People You Are at a Function With:

1. So you have a child in the show?
2. How is you meal?
3. How do you know our hosts?

The above questions are suitable for people that will either be complete strangers or people who you know only a little. The basic knack there is to ask questions about the immediate situation in which you find yourselves, since you know that you have at least that in common.

The next list of conversation starter questions is more appropriate for people whom you see most of the time but may not be particularly close friends with, such as colleagues or classmates in a regular class.

1. What did you think about….? (a recent news event)
2. How was your meeting/class?
3. How are you doing?
4. How are things going with … (the essay, the project, something you know they are engaged in at the moment)?
5. I like your (item of clothing, hairstyle etc); where did you get it?

Conversation Starters for People that you would like to Know Better:

1. How do you like to spend your free time?
2. Do you enjoy…? (a favorite hobby of yours)
3. What do you enjoy about …? (whatever you are engaged in doing together at the moment)
4. If you could change one thing about your life, what
5. would you change?

Don’t worry if you don’t understand any of the responses which you get; just simply ask for clarification. A simple ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite understand that’ will usually suffice.

So you can see how useful conversation starter questions are; now hopefully you can also see how they needn’t be difficult to think of.