Lesson Plans: Functional Language

Great practice of negotiating and English for the insurance industry and financial English more generally, with students using and trying to remember typical insurance vocabulary used in negotiating roleplays.

Choosing between suitable, unsuitable and comically bad negotiating responses, trying to remember the good ones, then analysing them for the best language and tactics.

Starting and ending polite and friendly emails and letters review

Giving, agreeing with and disagreeing with opinions on end of year and New Year festivities speaking, including seeing if those opinions match your political outlook

Students explain and then roleplay typical realistic situations for them to use English for business and ESP communication, including face to face, on the phone and by email - great for first classes and as a lead-in to needs analysis.

English for logistics students describe typical realistic English situations for them then roleplay communicating face to face, on the phone or by email, and reflect on how the interaction went - good for first classes as a kind of needs analysis.

Explaining festivals and celebrations that the other person doesn't know practice, with useful phrases for explaining meanings, origins, customs, etc.

Phrases for giving examples speaking game

Deciding and stating the purpose of your presentation review, including bad examples to improve

How to start formal and informal presentations review, including a jigsaw task.

Good and bad ways to do personal introductions in presentations.

Discussing and arranging steps to get a presentation ready.

Lying game to practise phrases for quoting sources, especially useful for EAP classes

Working out which opinions phrases are stronger, including strong and weak agreeing and disagreeing.

Places for foreign visitors to go to speaking.

Words and phrases to describe films speaking and vocabulary brainstorming, also good for the language of recommendations practice.

A fun dealing with requests and questions controlled practice speaking game in which students move around the board by making phrases more and more polite/ formal.

Presentation or practice of how to respond to requests and asking for information through predicting the next line of typical dialogues and then brainstorming useful phrases.

Realistic requests in the classroom setting speaking

Positive and negative answers to requests practice, including more polite responses

Phrases for sharing your personal experiences speaking

Mixed conversations in shops to cut up and put in order, followed by students testing each other on the shop assistant and customer phrases.

TPR practice of phrases for shoppers and shop assistants, starting with a guessing game and then students testing each other on the language.

Students put cards together to match three typical shopper responses to things that shop assistants often say to them, then are tested on the language in other ways.

Advice on using English in social situations, with advice practice and useful social English phrases

Turn taking phrases and active listening phrases presentation and practice, starting with a fun quick reactions game, and continuing with brainstorming and classifying useful language.

Phrases for beginning and closing conversations review by memorising model conversations with a fun covering the text word by word game.

Beginning and closing conversations phrases review starting with a fun quick reactions game, with students then trying to remember and classifying the start and end of conversations language.

Judging if opinions, agreeing and disagreeing phrases are strong or weak quick reactions game.

Strong recommendations and weak recommendations with medical vocabulary speaking, with suggested medical problems to discuss and a functional language presentation.

Words that go together in strong opinions phrases and weak opinions phrases.

Current affairs vocabulary and strong opinion and weak opinion phrases presentation and speaking practice, with model opinions to discuss then freer speaking.

Stronger generalising phrases and weaker generalising phrases review.

Roleplay meetings on the topic of working from home, good for English for HR classes and functional language for business meetings practice.

Completing telephoning phrases through brainstorming and roleplays. Students practice different phrases for telephoning situations. They test each other in pairs and roleplay conversations.

Different kinds of phrases for interrupting classification and card games.

Pronouncing numbers, giving advice and travel and tourism vocabulary speaking practice, including students discussing their own real travel suggestions based on typical situations for using numbers.

Contrasting commands and offers from travel staff with please + verb with requests from travellers with can/ could, including the most common phrases to say and hear while travelling.

Staff and travellers phrases listening and speaking practice.

Common sentences in business reports presentation and practice through gapped sentences to discuss and complete, with different ways of writing numbers and an optional extension with insurance vocabulary - good for financial English classes.

Comparing and contrasting review on the topic of Valentine's Day, with linkers, comparatives, etc.

Suggestions phrases and weather vocabulary speaking practice, with suggested questions and weather words to ask for advice with.