Lesson Plans: Functional Language

Possession and requests language with have practice games, including cards with suitable numbers, objects and situations, plus personalised speaking.

Using a coin for more fun practice of likes and dislikes language with and without third person S, with a coin choosing topics, answers and who to ask about.

Personal preferences likes and dislikes speaking game with names of animals vocabulary, based on pairs/ the memory game.

Formal and informal making and responding to requests and enquiries model emails memorisation game, ending with brainstorming useful phrases for the beginning, middle and end.

Lots of formal and casual language for the body of different kinds of emails, starting with a coin game, then continuing with brainstorming and matching useful phrases.

Typical mistakes with different kinds of emailing phrases plus extra ideas.

Email phrases that can finish in different ways practice.

Different ways to end typical emailing phrases brainstorming tasks.

First lesson for students in logistics companies and departments, starting with pairwork needs analysis and continuing to roleplays of the most realistic situations for their own jobs.

Describing and comparing technologies games

Students practise reacting while they listen to each other talk about family members, then brainstorm suitable active listening language and relationships vocabulary for that speaking.

Students draw themselves and their classmates with sensible and silly favourites based on three rolls of the dice, then make up similar dice games for more rounds of the game, for practice of "My/ Your/ The...'s favourite... is..."

First contact by email, telephone and face to face review, starting with line by line brainstorming.

Different things you do when you make first contact card game.

Formal business communications and casual business communications review.

Useful phrases for polite and casual communication matching card game, followed by students trying to remember the most useful language for business and general speaking and writing situations.

Guessing people's statements about their leisure game, with common phrases for talking about free time

Students roll a dice to decide what to communicate about, how to communicate and what to do during the communication, then take part in speaking and writing communicative roleplays, including the most common functions.

Useful socialising in restaurants phrases simplest responses game.

Using hedging language to make soft and strong statements about traditional events, including asking and answering how + adjectives questions

Easy and then more difficult practice of different directions language in the UK and US, including different names for places.

Checking students understand and helping them memorise directions vocabulary and functional language phrases through fun drawing games, including similar and different but easily confused directions language.

Fun creating a town, office, etc through giving directions game, with useful vocabulary for describing places.

Giving more specific directions practice.

Directions made more memorable, easy to understand and fun through doing actions games, including directions language with similar and different meanings.

How to respond and not to respond in the airport, hotels, taxis, etc.

Fun functional language for giving advice and medical vocabulary practice through a guessing game, useful for both medical staff and people who could be patients.

Fun presentaton and practice of vital social English phrases for entertaining guests and being invited to bars and restaurants, including key words to make the phrases memorable and for speaking practice,

Human resources vocabulary and language of advice practice

Invitations and responding to invitations phrases oral practice

Thinking of what to say or write next in job applications step by step speaking activities.

Students make language learning recommendations based on their partner's likes, dislikes and future desires, useful as like and would like practice and learner training, with strong and weak language of preferences, and freer practice.

Advice, likes and preferences speaking, with presentation of differences between useful phrases, also good for learner training.

Making phrases for controlling group discussions more formal speaking game, including rude language for starting and ending seminar sessions and group discussions to improve.

Students use active listening phrases as their partners talk about learning English, then try to remember the two kinds of phrases for not listening in silence - also useful for learner training.

Students ask questions to get more support for arguments they are listening to such as examples and personal experiences, brainstorm useful phrases for supporting arguments with other sources etc, then can use that language in freer speaking about law.

Like and don't like + nouns and gerunds practice with a fun miming game, starting with suggested things to act out their positive and negative feelings about.

Ten fun flipping a coin games to practise like and don't like, including trying to get particular answers, finding preferences that people share, lying games, and guessing games.

Students find tastes that they share with their partners in order to practise the language of preferences, using the suggested topics and phrases if they like, then find differences in likes and dislikes and/ or play coin games.

Students share their preferences to complete sentences covering both of them like "We both adore....", then try to recall and analyse the strong and weak likes and dislikes language that they just used,

A fun suggesting new food for your partner game with points and winners, for preferences and future desires/ offers with "like" practice, showing the differences between "like" and "would like"

Like + verb personalised speaking practice with a fun dice game in which students try to make true statements about their partner(s) and people they know.

Students try to get positive responses to preferences and desires yes/ no questions with like, including trying to work out which grammar is needed for each suggested question by meaning and guessing about your partner.

Two fun personalised speaking coin games to practise first letter phonics and like/ don't like, including with third person -s.

Likes, dislikes and favourites speaking practice through guessing objects from hints and brainstorming how people and things feel about one thing, with suggested objects cards and third person -s practice.

More complex giving recommendations and suggestions card games

More complex giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing phrases card games

Fun presentation or practice of phrases for looking at both pros and cons through a matching card game based on dominoes, particularly good for speaking in EAP classes and speaking exams such as IELTS Speaking Part Three.

Phrases for group brainstorming presentation starting with needs analysis.

Students give mini-presentations on using English, roleplay typical situations where they need to use their English skills, then discuss how to improve their knowledge and abilities outside the classroom.