| LESSON OVERVIEW
This lesson plan looks at the modern office spaces and the cool amenities there are in the office right now. Your students will discover Facebook’s London office and what it looks like. They’ll also have a chance to discuss whether those extra facilities boost work efficiency, which ones are actually practical and which just look nice on paper.
The aim of the lesson is to practise speaking skills with a work-related topic, but the worksheet also includes listening comprehension and vocabulary tasks.
C1 / Advanced60 minStandard LessonUnlimited Plan
WARM-UP
The worksheet starts with two warm-up tasks that introduce the topic but also get your students talking and practising their speaking skills. In the first one, they need to read and exchange their opinions about some quotes related to the workspace. They present various ideas on what your work environment should be like. In the second task, they need to collaborate and negotiate to create a ranking of most useful office amenities. Before this task, you might want to elicit some of the things they currently have in their offices and extend the list to introduce more vocabulary and let them choose top10 from a longer list.
VIDEO
Before watching the video, ask your students whether they have seen or heard what the office space of big tech companies look like. Ask them to predict what kind of facilities they expect to see at Facebook’s London office. Create a common list on the board which you’ll later confront with that shown in the video. Exercise 3 is a listening comprehension task. It includes 6 questions for which your students need to find answers. Depending on your class level, you have two ways of approaching this task:
- Let them read the questions before you play the video. Then, watch the video and ask them to make notes as they watch it;
- Watch the video once. Afterwards, let them answer the questions in accordance with what they heard and play the video again so that they can check their answers and fill in any gaps.
POST-VIDEO VOCABULARY
After watching the video and doing the comprehension task, your students will learn some new vocabulary taken from the video. There is an extra challenge in this fill-in-the-gaps activity (exercise 4). Your students not only need to put the words in the right gap but also think about the grammar structure and change the forms of the verbs.
The next task is designed to reinforce newly-learnt vocab by using it first in a writing activity and then in an oral task. Students will have to use some of the new words to describe their own office spaces and then exchange their descriptions and get more details from each other. Want to practise reported speech? It’s a perfect chance to mix the pairs and ask them to tell each other what their previous partners said.
DISCUSSION
The lesson finishes with some discussion points. Divide your class into small groups (3-4 people) and ask them to discuss the provided questions. Encourage your students to use the vocabulary they’ve learnt in the previous tasks. All the discussion points focus on modern workplaces, their design and impact on employees. Enjoy!
ROLEPLAY: PROJECT CHILLOUT ROOM (PDF-ONLY)
If you want to get your students to do some group work and practise their teamworking, negotiation and collaboration skills, consider using our case study. This activity contains a group task in which they need to roleplay being involved in a project focused on developing a new break room for a fictitious company. Your students will be constrained by user requirements and limited budget so that they have to reach a compromise and decide what the break room should look like. We love this kind of tasks for Business English students as a relatable background info, clear requirements and goals make them cooperate, and it simulates a type of real-life discussion they might be involved in later.
You can find the handout for the case study in the Teacher’s Version pdf.
WORKSHEETS
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What a great lesson idea – I am planning on using it next week with my English learners
Cool! Let us know how it went!
Looks great for the classes I teach. Will be trying this out this week
Great!Let us know how it worked out.
I have Google Chrome. How can I download the video. Where I teach, they do not have internet.
Try using KeepVid: https://keepvid.pro/. It allows you to download YouTube videos, you just need a direct link to the video from YouTube
I’ve tried it with my students and they enjoyed this lesson. We managed to generate a lot of conversation on the various topics and tasks. I skipped the comprehension part because it might be too simple for the C1s, but I think it might be useful with the B2s.
Happy to hear that your students enjoyed it! Thanks for your feedback on the comprehension part level! it might help other teachers decide whether they should use the lesson.
A great lesson. I tried it with different student profiles and they all loved it.
That’s great!
great lesson thank you
Thank you very much. This is a great help.
My students loved this one, thank you!
Glad to hear that 🙂
Excellent lesson! Students got really engaged!! Thank you!
My students just enjoyed this lesson so very much! What a great material!
Great idea! I’m looking forward to trying it in my classes!
I know this is an older lesson plan now but I just used this lesson with my B2 business class and they especially loved the activity at the end. Thank you!
Awesome! I had fun developing that case study / roleplay so it’s great to hear that your students loved doing it.
This lesson is just awesome! I’m sure my students will love it ☺️
Thank you for this amazing lesson plan, Stan! I’ve just started a coursebook unit dedicated to work with my C1 student and this worksheet was ideal to add to the lead-in 🙂