Me, my work and I – first Business English lesson plan

Justa | Nov 27, 2019Feb 17, 2025

LESSON OVERVIEW

We created this first Business lesson plan with a view to helping other teachers in preparations before first classes with students. The worksheet includes activities that we’ve successfully used with our students during the first classes with new groups and individuals. However, we’ve extended this lesson plan by adding some task based on a video to not only check your students speaking skills and vocabulary range but also their listening skills.

We start our first Business English lesson plan with some speaking warm-up tasks. Yes, of course – you can start with all the technical/administrative arrangements, discover students’ needs and expectations, set up goals together and finally even create a classroom contract, but after that you get down to business 🙂

WARM-UP: LET’S GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER

So, the first warm-up task is prepared in such a way so that you as a teacher will learn about your new students, whereas the second one is for your students to learn about you as their new teacher. We believe that it’s very important that students can also get to know their teachers. And, obviously, it’s perfect time for them to practise making questions and for you to check whether they are good at it.

In the first task, students have to take one card from a stack of cards and talk about the topic for about 30 seconds. After that time, other students (or you in the case of one-to-one classes) should ask some follow-up questions. In the second task, you have to write on the board some words and phrases connected with your job, personal life, hobbies, etc. Students need to ask questions connected with specific words on the board. So if you write chess on the board, students may ask: Do you like playing chess? If it is the right guess, you can tell them something more about this part of your life if you have some time. This way you’ll definitely break the ice and get to know each other ?

VOCABULARY

This is a first Business English lesson so let’s move to tasks which will make your students talk about work-related issues more. In ex.2 students get several sentences with gaps. Their task is to complete them with correct prepositions. Then, in the next exercise they have to write questions with some phrases from the previous task. These include such phrases as: in charge of, apply for, graduate in, proficient in, etc. After writing 5 questions, students work in pairs and ask and answer them to learn more about other students from their group.

VIDEO + SUMMARIZING & DISCUSSION

During first classes with new students we also want to check a bit their listening skills. In this first Business English lesson, there is a short video with 6 tips for work-life balance. Students have to watch the video and summarize 3 tips to the other person. To make it more interesting, students have some words and expressions that they have to use when summarizing a tip to their partner. The lesson plan finishes with some discussion points related to the ideas presented in the video. It’s a good idea to do this activity as an open discussion.
Okay, so that’s it Our take on doing your first Business English lesson for your B1-B2 students. How about you? What do you do on the first lesson with new students? Share below in the comments!

Other ESL Brains first lesson worksheets:

• Nice to meet you! – first lesson with A2 students

• Stay interested, stay motivated – first lesson with new students (B2/C1)

WORKSHEETS

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