| LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this ESL lesson on eating out are to:
- talk about going out to eat;
- examine menus and work on useful vocabulary for eating out;
- listen to restaurant dialogues and role-play dining situations.
Students discuss eating-out experiences, review vocabulary for food places (e.g. food truck, fine dining restaurant, cafeteria) and talk about places to eat on different occasions. They explore restaurant menus, revise menu-related terms (e.g. refill, side dishes, beverages) and share their preferences. Students work with dialogues between customers and waiters, practise dining vocabulary (e.g. takeaway, nut-free, mocktails) and listen to conversations in varied food places. They also role-play eating-out scenarios.
60 minVocabulary LabUnlimited Plan
This is a Vocabulary Lab worksheet. With it, students are introduced to a set of vocabulary on a specific topic and practise it through controlled activities, speaking tasks and games. Learn more about it here.
WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY
This ESL lesson on eating out starts with a warm-up. Students discuss questions about eating out and their favourite restaurants. They then look at photos of food places (e.g. food court, steak house, buffet) and complete their names. Afterwards, students read descriptions (e.g. You can eat good grilled meat there) and say which food place each one is about. Moving on, they examine different situations (e.g. a birthday celebration, a family gathering, a date) and choose one place from the previous task they would go to and one they wouldn’t. Students explain. Following that, they look at a menu and match the words from the menu (e.g. starters, main courses, shareables) with their definitions. After that, students discuss questions about eating habits and choosing food at restaurants. Next, they complete restaurant lines between customers and waiters with words from the previous task. They choose who says each line.
LISTENING AND ROLE-PLAY
In this part of this ESL lesson on eating out, students complete dialogues between customers and waiters with words related to food and drinks (e.g. condiments, mocktails, nut-free). They then do tasks involving naming foods and drinks. Students complete menu phrases, give examples of dishes and places to eat and talk about popular shareables. After that, they listen to a recording of four dialogues. For each dialogue, students decide where the people might be or what type of food place they are talking about. Next, they listen to each dialogue again and try to remember as many details as possible. Then, students role-play it with a partner using as many target words and phrases from the lesson as they can. Finally, they work in pairs and receive cards with eating-out situations. Students role-play dialogues using the menus provided in the lesson.
HOMEWORK/REVISION
This ESL lesson on eating out also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students complete texts about eating out experiences with the target words and phrases from the lesson. They then decide what type of restaurant each person would enjoy. 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
Subscribe to unlock these and many other Standalone lesson lesson plans with the Unlimited plan
Subscribe
On page 22, point A says “customer.” Wouldn’t “waiter” be a better option?
You’re right, thanks for spotting that! We’ve made the changes 🙂
I may be mistaken, but buffet-style restaurants are usually called “self-service” or “self-serve”. Self-serving means selfish (or at least where I’m from). 🙂
Hi! Thank you for spotting it, we’ve changed it to ‘self-service’ 🙂