17th December 2024
Navigating “The Era of Self-Service” – A practical guide designed to help language learners master everyday digital interactions. With self-service technology becoming increasingly prevalent—from digital restaurant kiosks to mobile banking apps—students need both language skills and technical confidence to handle these situations independently. This collection features 10+ targeted activities developing listening comprehension, critical thinking, and essential vocabulary for the digital age. Find the complete set of activities at:
Here are some examples:
Digital Self Service: Advantages and Disadvantages
Self Service Critical Thinking Exercises
Note: I also updated the Christmas lessons page with some new exercises.
As AI and automation reshape the 2020s workplace, soft skills have become more valuable than ever. While machines excel at technical tasks, distinctly human abilities like emotional intelligence, adaptability, and creative problem-solving set successful professionals apart. Interpersonal competencies – from effective communication and leadership to resilience and empathy – are highly sought after across industries. In a world where technical tasks are increasingly automated, acquiring these uniquely human skills provides a significant competitive advantage.
I have created a focused set of 10 exercises that explore how soft skills and AI may interact and evolve together in future workplace environments. Find the complete set at:
The complete set includes:
Visual vocabulary matching and language activities
AI and soft skills critical thinking and discussion activities
Three dialogue listening activities
Two pronunciation exercises
Here are some examples:
AI vs Soft Skills Visual Discussion Worksheet
Soft Skills Critical Thinking Activities
Subscribe to get full access to complete lessons (not just extracts) with picture/vocabulary exercises and answers. Many lessons include and audio and video. There are no ads in the newsletter and you will receive high quality, and up-to-date teaching resources regularly. And, if you subscribe, you will get access to ideas for creating artificial intelligence prompts , that will enable you to create English language teaching materials quickly! In addition, you will get access to the complete sets of exercises, with a wider variety of exercises and activities. Also, if you take out a paid subscription, you can download large collections of PDF, audio and video materials in zip files. If you want to know more about me, you can find information on the About Us page.
Adverb Clauses of Time: This exercise presents adverb clauses of time with visual context.
Adverb Clauses of Time Timelines: This is an alternative approach for teaching adverb clauses of time using timelines. While experimental, it’s proven quite interesting.
Present Perfect and Present Perfect Continuous Timelines: It’s quite difficult to explain the different uses and contexts of the present perfect tense. Timelines greatly assist by providing visual representations of these time-related concepts. I used this method in my teaching recently and found that timelines were particularly helpful.
Decision Making Critical Thinking Exercises: Critical thinking exercises add variety to a lesson and often are a more enjoyable, interesting and engaging way to teach students than traditional vocabulary exercises.
Expressing Opinions about Food: This exercise format combines visual and critical thinking elements.
The Business English Listening/Speaking page has been updated with content relating to Hybrid Work , the Creator Economy and the Gig Economy. This content is highly relevant, covering contemporary topics like social media content creation, freelancing, and modern work trends. These topics are highly engaging for students and young adult learners.
Business English Listening/Speaking
Here is a new, growing and experimental page with a variety of teaching activities for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
Paris 2024 Summer Olympics Exercises
The environmental issues page has been updated with exercises for decarbonization and the water crisis.
Environmental issues home page
The kitchen, cooking and utensils vocabulary and expressions page has been improved with extra exercises for each topic.
Kitchen, cooking and utensils vocabulary
These are the latest in a series of lessons focusing are hot topics.
Cybersecurity lesson (with video, audio and PDFs)
See the Cybersecurity language exercises video on YouTube
Fast Fashion lesson with audio and PDFs
The exercises below explore idioms and contemporary business vocabulary. “Making requests” is a total reworking of an older exercise. It’s so much better now. And the “Supermarket enquiries role play” is a new exercise that practices (fairly) elementary everyday English.
Idioms for running a business video
Idioms for running a business (video, audio and PDFs)
Contemporary business vocabulary video
Contemporary business vocabulary language exercises (video audio and PDFs)
Making requests: office dialogues
Supermarket enquiries role play
I think it’s important to teach topics that are relevant to the 2020s. A lot of textbooks for ESL are unbelievably behind the times. Especially as things are happening so quickly these days. So these are the first in a series of lessons about trending topics. Next, we’re going to tackle climate change (decarbonization, renewables, electric vehicles, self-driving vehicles).
Semiconductors lesson ( see the YouTube video)
Inflation lesson (see the YouTube video)
This is an older exercise that now has been improved with a video. Also, the job interview role play exercise has been improved.
This page explores the language of fears and phobias with a variety of exercises.
Sport and exercise is a universal topic with many teaching possibilities.
Also, some new videos on YouTube:
February 5th, 2023
The latest additions to the Business vocabulary page include “Discussing a new project” a new project with audio and video and “Adjective for a businessman (or woman)”.
January 27th, 2023
This page has been updated with more to come. This project might be entitled “trying to make nouns more interesting”. I don’t know if it’s a success, but I’m trying.
January 19th, 2023
The brain is a great topic as is it can lead in many directions. It’s great for a general language learning discussion class. It’s especially good for medical sciences. And it’s also related to technology, as technology increasingly tries to simulate the brain.
Functions of the brain worksheets
June 26th
Prompts are instructions that you give to an AI program to get a desired result. Now, AI programs such as those created by OpenAI offer teachers extremely cheap and almost magical powers for creating teaching materials. You can create topic-specific sets of speaking questions, comprehension questions, answers, gap fills, multiple choice exercises, conversations and more. However, it’s crucial to have good prompts (instructions), to get the most out of these programs. I am currently researching and exploring the best prompts for AI programs in my Substack newsletter.
June 25th
Teaching really elementary English language classes can be tough. But with more resources, it’s possible to revisit some elementary topics and improve them, hopefully making exercises that focus more precisely on aspects of language, and creating more interesting activities that make it easier for the teacher. This week, the topic is routines and daily activities with a mixture of exercises including brainstorming, exercises for adverbs of frequency and adverbial phrases or time, and reading comprehension exercises which introduce prepositions of time and transition words for talking about a daily routine.
May 6th
This is a cool topic and one that nearly everyone can relate to.
Online shopping and delivery services listening/speaking and vocabulary exercises
April 30th
Logistics and the supply chain might not seem the most exciting English as a second language topic but they are very important business issues these days.
Import/export, logistics and supply chain
September 27th 2021
Body language is always an interesting topic for the classroom. Body language and gestures elicit a surprising variety of interpretations. It’s quite fun. And of course, when you add in a mix of cultures, it gets even more interesting.
Body language and gestures listening/speaking activities
August 13th, 2021
Now that’s is easy to gain access to a variety of voices, it is a great time to experiment with all kinds of listening activities.
7 essential listening activities