Agree to disagree? Negotiating conflict

Megan | Jun 07, 2024Jun 06, 2024

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• explore the world of conflict; 
• listen to podcast excerpts (4.5 minutes in total);
• learn conflict-related collocations;
• analyze conflict resolution styles and scenarios.

With this conflict resolution lesson plan, students discuss conflict in various contexts, share experiences and opinions, and think of important skills for handling conflict. They listen to the podcast excerpts (4.5 minutes in total) about conflict narratives and learn relevant collocations (e.g. assign blame, remain impartial). They also explore conflict resolution styles and react to hypothetical scenarios. 

DISCUSSION AND PODCAST

This conflict resolution lesson plan starts with a warm-up in which students brainstorm why conflict commonly occurs between various people or entities (e.g. roommates, company departments). Before listening to a podcast on conflict narratives, they predict the importance of the phrase, ‘They’ vs ‘I’, and then check their answer. Following that, they discuss some questions, i.e. the subjectivity of fairness and necessary skills for conflict resolution. Next, they listen to the rest of the podcast and complete statements with the correct word, according to ideas from the speakers. Then, they finish sentences about conflict narratives with their own opinions.

VOCABULARY AND CONFLICT STYLES

In this part of the conflict resolution lesson plan, students start with matching the relevant verbs to make common collocations (e.g. address an audience, a question). After that, they read statements and identify part of each statement that doesn’t make sense, and replace it with the correct collocation. Then, they choose four of the corrected statements to agree or disagree with. After that, students read a text about the TKI (Thomas-Kilman Conflict Instrument) styles and answer questions about it (e.g. students’ personal styles, appropriate styles depending on situations). Finally, students finish this conflict resolution lesson plan by applying their knowledge of the TKI styles to hypothetical conflicts in various contexts. 

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students read sentences describing conflict scenarios and give two pieces of advice using the conflict-related collocations. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

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