Summary
This downloadable PDF lesson plan for English teachers helps B2 students navigate corporate jargon and improve workplace communication skills. Using a humorous video about a conference call filled with clichés, students will explore common business idioms, practice vocabulary matching, and understand context. The lesson focuses on separable phrasal verbs and culminates in a role-play where students clarify and use corporate buzzwords in a meeting scenario.
Activities
- Students watch a short, funny video about a conference call to identify common business clichés. They answer comprehension questions to grasp the context and discuss the effectiveness of this communication style.
- Learners decode the meaning of 12 common corporate idioms, such as 'circle back' and 'low-hanging fruit,' by matching them to their plain English definitions in a table-based exercise.
- The lesson introduces separable and inseparable phrasal verbs common in business. Students practice this grammar point by rewriting sentences to correctly place the object within separable phrasal verbs like 'loop in'.
- In a pair role-play, one student acts as a 'jargon user' while the other is a 'clear communicator' who must ask for clarification, reinforcing the practical application of the lesson's vocabulary.
Vocabulary focus
This lesson focuses on common corporate jargon and business idioms. Key phrases include: circle back, land the plane, touch base, pick your brain, get granular, 30,000 foot standpoint, loop someone in, put a pin in it, bandwidth, peel back the onion, low-hanging fruit, and ping her.
Grammar focus
The grammar section concentrates on phrasal verbs in a business context. Students will learn to identify and correctly use separable phrasal verbs (e.g., 'loop the manager in') versus inseparable ones ('circle back on this issue'), reinforcing the concept with a sentence transformation exercise.
