Summary
This downloadable PDF lesson plan explores the business of podcasting for B2 English students. Using a short video, the class material teaches key vocabulary and grammar, making it an engaging ESL lesson on modern media. The lesson plan helps students discuss the rise of podcasts, including a warm-up discussion, vocabulary matching, and comprehension questions. Students then practice the passive voice to describe business actions and conclude with a creative role-play where they pitch their own podcast idea to investors, designed to improve both listening and speaking skills in a business and media context.
Activities
- Students begin by discussing their personal podcast listening habits, then match key business and media vocabulary like lucrative, acquisition, and confluence to their definitions to prepare for the video.
- Learners watch a video about the history and business of podcasting, answering detailed comprehension questions and completing a true/false exercise to check their understanding of how podcasts became a media phenomenon.
- The lesson focuses on using the passive voice to discuss business processes. After a grammar exercise, students learn useful phrases for discussing trends and apply everything in a final role-play activity pitching a new podcast.
Vocabulary focus
The vocabulary section focuses on terms essential for discussing business and media trends. Students will learn and practice words like acquisition (a business purchase), lucrative (profitable), confluence (a coming together of factors), narrative (a story), and sophisticated (advanced), enabling them to analyze the podcast industry more precisely.
Grammar focus
This lesson concentrates on the passive voice, a structure commonly used in business and formal contexts. Students learn why the passive is used to emphasize an action over the agent (the person doing it) and practice transforming active sentences into passive ones. This helps them describe processes and industry changes, such as 'new guidelines were established,' in a more professional and appropriate way.
