10 ways to have a better conversation

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Vocabulary - verb + preposition collocations

LESSON OVERVIEW

Teach your students new vocabulary, watch a cool TED talk and let them discover how to have better conversations using our ESL leson plan! The worksheet consists of a few warm-up questions, 2 vocabulary activities, listening comprehension and discussion part.

B2 / Upper Intermediate45 minStandard LessonPremium Plan

WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY

The worksheet kicks off with  a few warm-up questions to get students interested in the topic. Then, you move on to 2 vocabulary activities: the first one focuses on verb + preposition collocations, while the other on matching words with definitions. This is followed by a short speaking in pairs task (on the basis of new vocabulary).

LISTENING AND DISCUSSION

This TED Talk focuses on ways to improve the quality of your conversations and increase your talking skills. Celeste Headlee’s extensive experience as a writer and radio host makes her a perfect person to teach us how to communicate with others. In her speech, she proposes 10 rules that everybody should follow to make their conversations better.

At the end, students have a chance to discuss the 10 rules proposed by Celeste and express their opinion about them.

WORKSHEETS

Comments

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  1. Richard Palya

    Hi Thanks for the worksheet but I didnt really understand this question, it doesnt make sense.
    What kind of things are important to
    know how to talk and listen properly

    1. Stan

      Yeah, it looks a bit awkward – I’m fixing it right away. Thanks for leaving a comment 🙂

  2. Elissa

    This looks great but the links to the worksheets are working.

    1. Justa

      Thanks Elissa for your comment! We were correcting something in the worksheets two days ago and forgot to upload the updated ones.
      Already fixed!

  3. Kristin York

    Thanks for the ideas in this. There’s an error. You can’t say, There are too much unnecessary things. The correct quantifier for this sentence is “many” (not much). I’ve been noticing more errors, actually, in ESL Brains. Are these materials created by native speakers?

    1. Stan

      Apologies for that silly mistake! This is one of the first lessons we published, actually it’s the first one. While we double-check all the worksheets, we sometimes miss even so obvious things. That’s why since 2021 we’ve been working with a professional proofreader and right now we’re in the process of proofreading all the pre-2021 lessons as well. That’s why this and many other lessons will be improved and (hopefully) all the errors will be fixed within a month or so.
      Actually, this and many other lessons on ESL Brains haven’t been created by native speakers. But I don’t think that it makes a difference because being a native speaker doesn’t mean you do not make mistakes in a given language.

    2. Stan

      That error was so embarassing that I sped up the process and published a new version (post-proofreading) a minute ago. Once again sorry for that mistake. Please give us some time to republish all the other older lessons and you will see then that their quality will be improved.

  4. DaveMar

    Great plan for a kick-off lesson with a new student!

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