Office Gossip

Gossip – reported speech lesson plan This lesson takes the theme of gossip to explore the grammar of reported speech. This plan doesn’t include a formal explanation of the grammar of reported speech so how you approach this is up to you.  Lesson plan and activity sheets PDF / ODT / Docx Teacher’s notes Reported Speech can be a tricky topic to […]

Making Suggestions

Suggestion box – first and second conditionals This is a fun way to review the first and second conditionals, this activity obviously works best if you edit the materials in the worksheet to be more applicable to your clients’ own situations. Step 1. Introduce the idea of a staff suggestion box and ask whether the students’ […]

Changing Careers

What job should I do? This activity is based on an exercise in a book for job seekers to help them identify rewarding career paths. Make a list of character traits such as these: reliable hard-working creative flexible ready to travel good communicator eager to learn leadership skills adventurous calm articulate curious determined enthusiastic focused […]

Describing Trends

Describing graphs – using the present perfect to talk about change Use this describing graphs worksheet to introduce talking about changes using the present perfect.

Telephone Roleplays

Simple telephone roleplay Telephone English is generally uncomplicated and straightforward, there’s a limited set of specific language which needs to be covered, the exception being conference calls which have their own set of challenges. This activity is designed to give students some very general situations in which to cover some common telephone call scenarios. Go through […]

Business English Phrasal Verbs

This is a simple game for practising phrasal verbs. Think of six phrasal verbs that you want to practise. On the board write the six different verbs and six different prepositions in two numbered lists. You will also need to think up and write down six sentences each using a different phrasal verb, remove the verb and […]

Business Collocations

Give pairs of students a copy of the Venn diagram. Ask them to sort the collocations below the diagram into the two areas stated in the circles. If the collocation seems to fit in both areas then they should write it in the middle section. When everyone is finished, draw the diagram on the board […]

Parallel dialogue

These following dialogues are split into two columns. In one column the English contains an error. Students read through the dialogue and decide for each line of dialogue which column contains the correct language. The dialogue contains grammatical forms and vocabulary which can then be focused on in follow up activities, for example, a telephone […]

Mixed up Business Idioms

Business idioms are part of daily working life. These worksheets allow your learners to see a number of business-related idioms in context. First, they should use their prior knowledge and educated guesswork to complete the idioms. Then see if the class can work out the meanings from their context. Learners are then invited to think of […]

Quantifiers & There is / are Activities

Here are some ESL activities which practise the use of quantifiers and the use of there is & there are. What’s in your fridge? – a vocabulary guessing game This is a vocabulary guessing game for practising is there and are there questions, as well as quantifiers like some, any, a lot of and vocabulary related to food, the home, the workplace, […]