Summary
This downloadable PDF lesson plan for English teachers is designed for C1 students to master the language of financial projections. This class material is perfect for a business English course, focusing on vocabulary and grammar for analysts and managers.
This advanced business English lesson equips students with the language needed to discuss financial forecasts. Activities include a warm-up discussion, a vocabulary matching task, a listening gap-fill, and a reading comprehension exercise about a corporate financial report.
Students then practice grammar for expressing certainty and speculation before applying all their skills in a realistic role-play simulating a quarterly planning meeting. This comprehensive material helps students build confidence in professional financial communication.
Activities
- Students begin with a warm-up discussion about the importance of financial forecasting. They then learn crucial business terminology like 'sensitivity analysis,' 'cash flow,' and 'underlying assumptions' through a definition-matching activity.
- A listening exercise has students fill gaps in a financial update, reinforcing key vocabulary. This is followed by a reading task where learners complete a news article about a company's financial projections using words from a word bank.
- The grammar section focuses on expressing different levels of certainty and speculation. The lesson concludes with a dynamic role-play where students act as financial analysts and department heads, presenting and questioning projections in a meeting.
Vocabulary focus
The lesson introduces essential vocabulary for financial modeling and analysis. Key terms include: underlying assumptions, sensitivity analysis, robust, to factor in, revenue forecast, cash flow, conservative, profitability, volatile, contingency, and mitigate. These words are practiced throughout the various exercises.
Grammar focus
This lesson focuses on the nuanced language of certainty and speculation. Students learn to differentiate between high certainty (e.g., 'is set to,' 'will certainly'), moderate certainty ('it is likely that,' 'should'), and low certainty/speculation ('could become,' 'might be'). Practice involves rewriting sentences to reflect different confidence levels.
