Summary
This ESL lesson plan is designed for B2-level English students to master emphasis structures for more effective and persuasive communication. The material uses a variety of exercises to teach students how to use cleft sentences, inversion, and fronting in professional and academic contexts.
This lesson helps intermediate students make their language more impactful. Activities include a warm-up discussion on persuasion, a listening gap-fill exercise, and vocabulary practice with terms like "compelling" and "resonate."
Students will analyze and practice key grammar structures through targeted exercises and sentence transformations. The lesson culminates in a speaking activity where students apply these techniques in realistic role-play scenarios, such as delivering a sales pitch or a project proposal, to enhance their persuasive abilities.
Activities
- A warm-up discussion about the elements of persuasive speech, encouraging students to reflect on their own communication experiences.
- A listening comprehension task where students complete a short text, focusing on how a speaker uses emphasis naturally.
- A grammar focus section that clearly explains cleft sentences (it-clefts and wh-clefts), inversion with negative adverbials, and fronting, complete with examples and interactive exercises.
- A reading comprehension activity based on a short article about impactful communication, followed by a vocabulary-in-context exercise.
- A guided speaking practice activity with role-play scenarios (e.g., sales pitch, project proposal) that prompts students to use the target emphasis structures to persuade an audience.
Vocabulary focus
The vocabulary section introduces key terms for persuasive communication. Students will learn and practice words such as "compelling," "resonate," "articulation," "persuasion," and "overlook" through interactive matching and gap-fill exercises that place the vocabulary in a relevant context.
Grammar focus
This lesson concentrates on three key emphasis structures to make communication more impactful. Students will learn to use cleft sentences (e.g., "It is... that..." and "What... is..."), inversion with negative adverbs (e.g., "Under no circumstances should we..."), and fronting to strategically highlight the most important parts of a message.
