| LESSON OVERVIEW
In this lesson students practise their listening skills by watching a video about how to deal with difficult relationships at work. They also expand their vocabulary (incl. phrasal verbs) while reflecting on typical problems between workmates. The lesson plan also includes two business English role plays.
B2 / Upper Intermediate75 minStandard LessonPremium Plan
LANGUAGE INPUT & DISCUSSION
To get students interested in the theme of the lesson, the worksheet starts with two quotations from a video they’re going to watch in the second part of the lesson. Students agree or disagree with them and discuss their work relationships. Next, they analyse five sentences which contain phrases from the video and match them with corresponding definitions. In the next pre-listening exercise, they look at a box with four phrasal verbs (e.g. put off, freeze out) and a set of four sentences with highlighted phrases. They have to substitute the phrases with the correct phrasal verbs. This series of vocabulary exercises finishes with a short discussion in which students circle a number (from 1-5) depending on how strongly they agree with four given statements.
LISTENING & BUSINESS ENGLISH ROLE PLAYS
Before students watch the video with tips on how to deal with difficult relationships at work, they try to predict them, as well as typical problems between people in the workplace. Then, they watch the video for the first time and check whether any of their own ideas are mentioned. Next, they move on to listening for details. They look at six gapped sentences and complete them with phrases from the video and engage in a short discussion about problems they’ve experienced in the workplace. They watch the final part of the video again and have to decide whether five statements in the next exercise are correct or not. Students identify the mistakes and correct them, which leads to another speaking activity based on agreeing or disagreeing with the statements and exchanging opinions. The lesson finishes with two business English role plays. Students pick a card and act out a situation in the workplace, trying to solve an issue with a colleague. Their task is to incorporate the vocabulary learnt earlier in the lesson.
WORKSHEETS
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Great work with this – It has an engaging topic, practical language points, and great pacing! Thanks ESL Brain team and Leanne for continuing to churn out high quality content. Makes my job easier.
Thank you for your kind comment. Much appreciated!
Hi there! there’s a mistake in the second quote in the exercise 1. I believe it should be ” I told all my colleagues…” not ” I told my all my colleagues…”.
Hi there! Thanks for spotting that! We’ve just deleted the extra ‘my’.
Tks Leanne for your great class. It’s a great topic for input and discussion. The actvities are really well-designed. I really appreciate it!
My business client really enjoyed today’s lesson, 🙂 it’s very thorough and engaging.
Great to hear. Thank you 🙂
Hello ESL, thanks for the great worksheets and resources.
Perhaps I’m dumb but I cannot really understand the meaning of this quote….it doesn’t make sense to me…particularly the second sentence.
“We all have this colleague who, we hope, quits his job so everyone in the office
is happy. If you don’t know any such person, quit your job.” Perhaps it should be “If you know any such person, quit your job”.
Hi! The quote might be a bit confusing as it is a joke. “If you don’t know any such person, quit your job.” – it means that you are this person that should quit the job to make everyone in the company happy 😉
agree it’s unecessarily confusing