This downloadable PDF lesson plan for English teachers provides class material to help B1 students practice explaining technical problems. This ESL lesson is perfect for business English classes and focuses on practical communication skills for the workplace.
This practical English lesson plan equips students with the language needed to communicate effectively with IT support. The material includes a vocabulary matching task, a listening gap-fill exercise, and a reading comprehension text about a software bug. A clear grammar focus is followed by a study of useful phrases and a final role-play activity that allows students to practice the new language in a realistic scenario, simulating a call to an IT helpdesk.
Activities
- Students build a foundation by matching key IT vocabulary like 'freeze', 'crash', and 'troubleshoot' to their correct definitions. This ensures they can accurately describe common computer problems in an office or at home.
- The lesson includes a listening exercise where students hear a user describing a computer issue. They must fill in the gaps in a short script, practicing their comprehension of the target vocabulary in a natural, spoken context.
- Students practice key grammar by completing sentences with the correct verb forms. This helps them learn to accurately explain when a problem started (past simple) and what steps they have already taken to solve it (present perfect).
- To consolidate their learning, students engage in a structured role-play. One student acts as a user with a Wi-Fi problem, while the other plays the IT support technician, using the lesson's vocabulary and phrases to have a realistic conversation.
Vocabulary focus
This lesson focuses on essential vocabulary for describing technical issues. Students will learn and practice terms such as to "freeze", "crash", "reboot", "update", "troubleshoot", and "install", as well as phrases like "error message" and "blank screen". The class material also provides useful phrases for calling support, stating the initial problem, giving specific details, and explaining what actions have already been taken to resolve the issue.
Grammar focus
The main grammar point is the distinction between the past simple and the present perfect. Students learn to use the past simple for finished actions at a specific time (e.g., "The problem started this morning") and the present perfect for recent actions with a current result or for steps taken so far (e.g., "I've already tried restarting it"). The exercises help students apply this grammar in the context of reporting a technical problem.
