Summary
This B2 English lesson plan provides comprehensive ESL class material to explore the rapid ascent of e-commerce platform Temu. It analyzes Temu's disruptive business model, aggressive marketing tactics, and its gamified shopping experience that has captured significant market share. Students will engage in discussions about the ethics of ultra-cheap products, considering environmental impact, labor practices, and consumer responsibility. The lesson incorporates video comprehension, business vocabulary building (e.g., loss leader strategy, incumbent), and a grammar focus on the passive voice in business contexts, culminating in a balanced writing task.
Activities
Discussion starter: Students begin by reflecting on their personal online shopping habits, ranking factors like price, quality, and brand. They share experiences with extremely cheap purchases and discuss ethical considerations that influence their decisions.
The vocabulary of disruption: Learners engage with an article about Temu's business model, filling in gaps with key terms such as omnipresence, acquisition, and sustainable, to better understand the company's strategies and market impact.
Video comprehension: Temu's impact on e-commerce: Students watch an informative video focusing on Temu's business strategy. They answer general comprehension questions based on this first viewing, noting key facts about its growth, parent company, and operational tactics.
Business vocabulary focus: Participants deepen their understanding of business terminology by matching key terms from the video, such as monthly active users, value proposition, and incumbents, with their precise definitions.
Grammar focus: The passive voice in business contexts: This section introduces the passive voice, explaining its formation (be + past participle) and common usage in business communication. Students practice by rewriting active sentences into a more formal, passive style.
Critical analysis: The true cost of cheap: Students read and analyze three distinct perspectives on the phenomenon of ultra-cheap online shopping. They then discuss consumer responsibilities, potential government regulation, and the ethical dilemmas presented.
Language for expressing opinions about business ethics: Learners practice using specific phrases to articulate and structure their opinions on ethical shopping, completing sentences with expressions like "On the one hand... on the other hand" and "It could be argued that...".
Second viewing: Detailed analysis: Students re-watch the video to perform a more detailed analysis, answering specific questions about Temu’s "assisted self-service" model, gamification techniques, advertising strategy impact, and sustainability concerns.
Writing task: A balanced view: To consolidate their learning, students write a short essay (150-200 words) discussing the pros and cons of e-commerce platforms like Temu, using at least five new business vocabulary words and incorporating both passive and active voice.
Vocabulary focus
This lesson introduces crucial business and e-commerce terms such as leverage, acquisition, omnipresence, gamifies, market share, sustainable, conglomerate, incumbent, monthly active users, loss leader strategy, value proposition, and cutting the middleman. Students will learn to use these to discuss modern retail trends and business disruption.
Grammar focus
The primary grammar point is the passive voice (be + past participle). Students will learn how it is frequently used in business writing and formal contexts to emphasize actions and results rather than the agent performing the action, for example, "Concerns have been raised by consumers" or simply "Concerns have been raised."
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