Summary
This downloadable ESL lesson plan for English teachers helps C1 students master presenting financial data. This class material focuses on key vocabulary, advanced grammar for emphasis, and professional speaking skills for a business context.
This comprehensive business English lesson guides students through the process of presenting financial reports with confidence. Activities include a warm-up discussion, key vocabulary matching, a listening gap-fill, and reading comprehension based on an earnings report. Students will practice using cleft sentences to add emphasis before applying all their skills in a final stakeholder briefing role-play where they present company performance data.
Activities
- Students start with a discussion about financial reports and effective presentations to activate their existing knowledge and prepare for the lesson's core topics.
- A vocabulary matching exercise introduces crucial financial terms like "revenue drivers," "YoY growth," and "the bottom line," ensuring comprehension for later tasks.
- The lesson includes a listening exercise where students complete a gap-fill by listening to a manager reflecting on a recent presentation, improving their business listening skills.
- Students analyze a fictional news article about a company's earnings report, answering comprehension questions to check their understanding of data presented in a text.
- The lesson culminates in a practical role-play where students act as a CFO, using a data card to present quarterly results to an investor and handle follow-up questions.
Transcript
00:00 Presenting our quarterly financial results to the board was quite challenging.00:05 We focused on clarity and transparency, highlighting key revenue drivers and areas for improvement.00:10 It was essential to address all stakeholder concerns directly and professionally.00:15 We aimed to ensure everyone understood the long-term strategic implications of these figures.00:20 The feedback indicated that our comprehensive approach was well-received.00:25 Next time, we might allocate even more time for Q&A to deepen engagement.00:30 Understanding the audience's priorities is always crucial for a successful presentation.
Vocabulary focus
This lesson focuses on essential business and financial terminology required to discuss company performance accurately. Key vocabulary includes: revenue drivers, Year-over-Year (YoY) growth, stakeholder concerns, strategic implications, allocate, the bottom line, mitigate risk, and forecast.
Grammar focus
The primary grammar point is the use of cleft sentences for adding emphasis, a key skill for effective presentations. Students will learn to form and use both It-clefts (e.g., "It was our new strategy that...") and Wh-clefts (e.g., "What drove our success was...") to highlight the most important information.
