5 Cool Advertising & Branding Vocabulary & Language Exercises
Advertising and branding vocabulary and listening/speaking exercises help students familiarize themselves with language, expressions and terminology necessary to get ahead in the corporate world.
1 Elements of advertising vocabulary
This is a business English ESL exercise introducing and exploring the language and vocabulary of advertising. Students try to match the vocabulary with the appropriate pictures. This exercise works well as an icebreaker at the beginning of a lesson.
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2 Branding vocabulary worksheet (with answers)
This is an Business English exercise introducing vocabulary commonly used to talk about brands and branding. Students try to match the vocabulary with the appropriate pictures. The worksheet includes important business and branding vocabulary including:
This is an ESL speaking and writing lesson for talking about advertising. First, students write five survey questions about advertising. There are some examples of questions on the first page of the PDF. When they have written five questions on Page 2 of the PDF, they can walk around the class asking classmates their questions and noting down their answers on the worksheet. Finally, they write a short report from their survey question answers. This is a fun communicative exercise that allows students to mix freely.
Amazing Describing People and Appearance Listening, Vocabulary and Language Exercises
30th December 2023
Learning the language and vocabulary for describing people and their appearance is useful because:
It helps you communicate with others about the people you see.
It helps you to identify people.
It helps you to express yourself.
It helps you to connect with people.
It helps you to better understand the people around you.
1 Describing appearance
This is an elementary multiple choice and /picture matching activity for talking about appearance. Multiple choice and matching activities are no-stress activities (I hope!).
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2 Expressing opinions about appearance
A more advanced speaking and vocabulary exercise for agreeing/disagreeing with opinions about appearance.
3 Elements of appearance vocabulary worksheet (with audio and answers)
This is a listening/speaking exercise introducing and exploring the language and vocabulary of appearance for describing people. Students listen to the audio and match the vocabulary with the appropriate pictures.
This is a listening/speaking exercise for describing people. This exercise focuses on a missing woman. Students can complete the listening exercise and then write their own conversation.
5 What does he look like ? (conversation listening/speaking activity)
In this conversation or speaking exercise students practice listening and creating a conversation describing someone’s appearance. They use the conversation skeleton below to create their own conversation. This could also be adapted to be a speaking activity.
6 What do they look like ? (with audio and answers)
This is a describing appearance listening, vocabulary and writing exercise. First, students listen to the audio and match the items (A-I) to the pictures. Then students use the vocabulary in the center of the worksheet or their own ideas to write descriptions of the people in the pictures.
7 Clothes and accessories listening/vocabulary (with audio and answers)
This is an elementary English language listening/vocabulary exercise introducing and exploring the language and vocabulary of clothes and accessories. Students try to match the vocabulary with the appropriate pictures. Or the exercise can be used as an introduction to the vocabulary and the students listen to the audio and match the words to the pictures.
This is an ESL exercise to help students become familiar with vocabulary for describing appearance. Students sort the words into the appropriate columns.
In this writing exercise students brainstorm information about a person they know well. Then they write a more wholistic description of a person including appearance, personality and other aspects of his/her life.
Comparison/contrast writing can be really enjoyable to teach if you have a variety of activities to slowly develop students’ writing skills. These can include: brainstorming, organizing, outlining, sorting and sentence writing exercises.
1 Comparison/contrast essay: high school students vs university students (with possible answers)
This is a comparison/contrast essay worksheet. Students have to complete the essay with appropriate ideas.
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2 Compare/contrast essay organizer (with example)
This is a worksheet that introduces students to one method of preparing a topic for a comparison/contrast essay.
4 Brainstorming ideas for comparison/contrast essay
This is a comparison/contrast brainstorming worksheet to help students become familiar with the language of comparison/contrast essays. It also helps them organize their ideas.
This is an elementary exercise to help English language students understand and remember the different forms of comparative adjectives. Students sort the adjectives into the appropriate columns and then write sentences.
15 Entertaining and Merry Christmas Vocabulary and Speaking Exercises
Christmas is a good topic as it touches on so many aspects of society and culture. It’s also pretty good fun.
Updated 9th December 2024
Expressing Opinions about Christmas
Expressing opinions is a good way for students to practice English while discussing Christmas customs. This agree/disagree worksheet presents nine statements about traditions, gifts, and celebrations. Each statement has a matching photo and uses words from a holiday word bank like “cookies,” “decorations,” and “dinner.” The answer key provides examples of reasons for both agreeing and disagreeing.
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Santa Interview Role Play
Featuring a lighthearted interview with Santa Claus, this role-play lets students practice question-answer patterns in English. The dialogue covers Christmas preparations, gift requests, and Santa’s work challenges, ending with a message about giving.
This festive ESL exercise brings Santa Claus into your classroom with ready-to-use discussion questions. Students move from basic scene description to deeper cultural chats about Christmas traditions worldwide. The five sections cover everything from Santa’s outfit to personal holiday memories, with helpful example answers and key vocabulary included. Perfect for mixed-level classes, this activity combines basic observation skills with chances to share holiday experiences.
This engaging listening and speaking activity shows ten different Christmas scenes. Students hear and complete what Santa might say in each situation, from checking his long gift list to enjoying cookies and milk. The exercise mixes humor with seasonal vocabulary as Santa deals with everyday problems like finding his reindeer, checking his savings, and packing his gift bag. Example answers range from practical (“5 minutes to midnight!”) to playful (“Ho ho gotta go…Merry Christmas!”).
This speaking activity offers 15 questions about holiday traditions and experiences. Each question comes with two sample answers and a follow-up prompt, moving from general topics like family gatherings to specific ones about movies and markets. The exercise splits into two parts: open-ended questions about traditions, food, and decorations, followed by yes/no questions about Christmas markets, Santa Claus beliefs, and holiday customs. Sample responses help students structure their answers while follow-up questions encourage deeper discussion.
Circling Similar-Sounding Words has students distinguish between tricky holiday pairs like “bells/bills/balls” and “stocking/stalking,” helping them catch subtle sound differences. The “-ed” Verb Endings task sorts Christmas actions into three pronunciation patterns, from the soft “d” in “snowed” to the extra syllable in “decorated.” Syllable Stress Exercise focuses on longer holiday terms like “celebration” and “anticipating,” showing students where to place the emphasis in multi-syllable words. Complete answer keys guide both teachers and learners through each exercise.
Comparing Christmas celebrations across cultures, this critical thinking exercise combines a festive activity ranking task with a USA-Japan tradition comparison chart. Discussion questions guide students through key cultural differences, with model answers provided.
Write a Conversation: What are you doing at the end of the year?
This conversation exercise gets students talking about end-of-year celebrations. Students use a word bank with terms like “gifts,” “candles,” and “Santa Claus” to create dialogues about Christmas and New Year activities. The worksheet includes a fill-in-the-blank conversation between Ryan and Ashley about family gatherings, gift exchanges, and holiday wishes, with both a blank template and completed version for reference.
Building holiday storytelling skills, this ESL activity helps students describe positive Christmas experiences. The worksheet combines a vocabulary matching exercise, fill-in-the-blank conversation, and reflection questions. Students use phrases like “got a promotion,” “festive atmosphere,” and “sang Christmas carols” to complete a dialogue between Ashley and Levi about Ashley’s wonderful Christmas memories, from career success to family gatherings. The exercise includes supporting images and concludes with personal questions about students’ own Christmas experiences.
The Story of Christmas (or The Story of Jesus) (with answers)
Combining images and text, this ESL exercise teaches the nativity story through 12 key scenes. Students match illustrations to phrases like “the Virgin Mary,” “announcing the birth of Jesus,” and “running away to Egypt.” The worksheet includes a detailed script that follows the story from Gabriel’s visit to Mary through the family’s flight to Egypt. The chronological format and visual aids help students understand the sequence of events and cultural significance of the Christmas story.
Mapping Christmas themes, this ESL brainstorming activity divides holiday topics into seven illustrated categories. Students explore core aspects of Christmas through labeled images: holiday foods, seasonal decorations, cultural traditions, Christmas spirit, gift-giving, festive characters (like Santa), and common Christmas problems. The mind map format with arrows encourages students to expand each topic with their own ideas and experiences.
Exploring both sacred and secular Christmas elements, this ESL activity connects 13 images to vocabulary through a mind map format. Students match pictures of religious figures (three wise men, Angel Gabriel), decorative items (tinsel, mistletoe, candles), and holiday symbols (sleigh, reindeer, stockings). The exercise blends traditional elements like frankincense with modern customs like wrapping paper, and includes literary references like Scrooge. An answer key helps teachers verify student work.
In this speaking exercise, students explore personal views on Christmas through eight illustrated discussion questions. The prompts cover holiday preferences, gift-giving habits, seasonal challenges, and work responsibilities. Cartoon images support each question, helping students discuss topics from beach Christmases to religious observances. The format encourages learners to share experiences while practicing conversational English about holiday customs and traditions.
In this activity, students learn Christmas vocabulary through a flexible image-matching exercise that can be used for dictation or team games. The worksheet features nine rows of themed images covering religious elements (wise men, nativity scene), decorations (wreath, tinsel), characters (Scrooge, elves), and traditions (caroling, gift-giving). Teachers can dictate words with contextual sentences or create competitive games where students earn points for matching words to pictures. A word bank and word cloud visualization provide additional support for language learners exploring holiday-related terms.
In this totally fun exercise, students match words and phrases to pictures for a humorous look at Santa’s life. Through 12 amusing scenarios, they explore Santa’s mishaps and challenges like getting “stuck in the chimney,” “dealing with an angry elf,” and “getting an electric shock.” The worksheet combines comical illustrations and photos to show Santa’s everyday problems, from reading wish lists to feeling confused about bills. An answer key helps teachers check student work against the correct phrase-picture pairs.
Teaching the past tense is not easy. Students have to learn a whole new set of vocabulary. It’s tough. Indeed, often, students have a mental barrier against learning and using it. Students learn and start to master the present simple tense and then suddenly they hit the past tense which presents them with a whole set of new vocabulary. Many elementary students stop right there and never really progress. As a teacher, I want a variety of activities to help me get students through this difficult learning stage. A variety of listening and speaking activities really helps.
Simple Past Tense
Teaching past tense verbs through everyday scenarios, this comprehensive guide combines visual cues with clear examples. The materials include a detailed pronunciation guide for -ed endings, paired pictures and fill-in sentences, and a word bank of common verbs. Helpful tips explain regular and irregular verb patterns, while audio support reinforces correct usage.
These English as a Second Language (ESL) activities focus on enabling students to practice using the past simple tense through one-on-on or pair work conversations. The PDFs comprise two categories of scenarios: open-ended (Wh questions) situations and yes/no scenarios, each supplemented with potential responses and follow-up questions that help expand the conversation.
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A Bad vacation past tense role play speaking activity (with answers)
In this past tense simple activity students listen to the audio and complete the role play story about a bad vacation using the vocabulary and the pictures. Alternatively, the pictures may be used as an example and students can be asked to create a role play using their own ideas.
Introducing elementary past tense vocabulary (and listening)
NB: I just added video to this exercise. This is an ESL listening/vocabulary exercise to introduce students to the past tense. Students match phrases to pictures as the teacher dictates past tense phrases using sentences to give context. This exercise is a great icebreaker and introduction to the past tense. It also works really well as an online listening assignment. Just post page 1 and 2 (page 2 if students are being presented the vocabulary for the first time) of the PDF, along with the audio file to Google Classroom. Students listen to the audio, write the vocabulary on the pictures digitally and then return the assignment.
Writing conversations with language cues is one good way of getting into the past tense. Students have to think about a past tense context and and create a role play for this context. The language cues give them some assistance in guiding and developing their ideas. Also, there are 2 example conversations that can be used as listening exercises.
This exercise is a compliment to the exercise above. Of course, if you want to talk about things using the past tense, you need to be able to discuss and describe both good and bad situations. And often, in the classroom, bad situations are more interesting and fun.
This is an ESL or English language role play listening /speaking lesson for practicing conversational English. It’s a bit of an old classic and allows for imagination and creativity while practicing the past tenses and vocabulary for describing people.
Making past tense sentences with time phrases worksheet (with answers)
This is another fairly elementary ESL exercise to help students learn to use the past tense. This time students match try to write short sentences with past tense time phrases for each picture.
Past tense endings pronunciation worksheet (with audio and answers)
This is an exercise to help students understand, practice or review the past tense endings and the different kinds of pronunciation for the “ed” endings of verbs with different spellings. Students sort the verbs into the appropriate column. Students then write some sentences which they can be asked to say out loud.
Ghosts is a brilliant high energy game perfect for practicing the past tense. With a capable elementary or pre-intermediate class it can become something quite special.
This is a fun Christmas role play activity in the past tense. Students can listen to the audio or watch the video and match the vocabulary to the pictures. Then they can answer the questions or create their own “Bad Christmas” role play.
