Month: May 2019

6 Common Socializing and Small Talk Dialogues Listening/Speaking Exercises

Socializing includes many varied and unexpected but common everyday situations which require competent speaking skills. Students of a foreign language have to be prepared to encounter these situations and be ready with appropriate responses. Pictures help give context to these situations and help students imagine  how they might respond.

1 Common imperatives for socializing 

This is a listening/speaking exercise for teaching imperatives used in every day situations.

(download PDF)

(see the video version on YouTube)

2 Social Speaking Skills (with sample answers, audio and video)

  This is a general socializing language listening/speaking exercise  to help English language learners practice expressions and phrases used in everyday conversational encounters.   Students can challenge their own speaking skills competency by trying to complete the conversational exchanges on the worksheet and then listening to the audio.

Socializing and speaking skills (PDF)

(video mp4)

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3 Business socializing and talking on the phone (with sample answers, audio and video)

  This is another  socializing language listening/speaking exercise  focusing on a business woman’s life.      

Business socializing  (PDF)

(video mp4)

4 Socializing with friends and family (with answers)

  More short dialogues and speech bubbles for socializing with friends and family speaking skills exercise to help language learners improve their communicative fluency. Students look at the pictures and fill in appropriate questions and answers.   

Socializing with friends and family (PDF)

Speaking Skills  Resources for the Hospitality Industry

7 Kitchen and Cooking Vocabulary and Expressions 

8  Hotel Vocabulary and Speaking Skills Exercises

5  Airport and Airline Vocabulary and Language Skills Exercises with Answers

5 Intercultural Communication Language Exercises and Worksheets

5 Cool Advertising & Branding Vocabulary & Language Exercises

5 Socializing and common everyday situations (with answers)

  Students learning a foreign language face unexpected but common everyday situations which require socializing skills. This worksheet challenges to find responses to some of these common experiences.  

Socializing and common everyday situations (PDF)

Related Speaking Skills Resources

ESL Listening Activities Guide

Socializing Speaking Lessons Home

10 Role Play Speaking Activities

11 Classroom Debate and Discussion Language Activities

6 Socializing using more advanced/academic vocabulary (with answers)

  Another socializing worksheet focusing on common everyday situations and using slightly more advanced vocabulary.  

Socializing using more advanced vocabulary (PDF)

Essential Academic Vocabulary Lessons IELTS, TOEFL and TOEIC

Academic vocabulary can be pretty tough to teach. A variety of exercises including picture matching, sentence writing and gap fill exercises can make for a rewarding lesson.  Recycling, reinforcing and reviewing using multiple intelligences is the best way to teach vocabulary. Academic vocabulary is essential for students attempting to pass the IELTS, TOEFL and TOEIC tests.

1 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises  1 (with answers)

This is an exercise for introducing or reviewing the following academic vocabulary that might be used to talk about education and learning:  aptitude, boundaries,  capable, ethical, challenges, advance, enforce, criticism, assess, hesitate, acknowledge, issue, discouraged.

Essential academic vocabulary 1 (PDF)

 

2 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises  2 (with answers)

This is an exercise for introducing or reviewing the following academic vocabulary to discuss the qualities of  and relationships between colleagues and employees :  favoritism, exemplified, unenthusiastic, attend, outline, workplace, potential, perceived, executives, function, realized, responsibility, admiring, resolved, perspective, appointed, conflict.

Essential academic vocabulary 2 (PDF)

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Subscribe to get full access to the latest and best resources from eslflow.com. There are no ads in the newsletter and you will receive entertaining, high quality, and up-to-date teaching resources regularly. And, if you subscribe, you will be supporting the eslflow website.

Related Resources:

10 opinion and argument writing worksheets

8 comparison/contrast templates and exercises

10 cause/effect writing activities

3 kinds of exercises for teaching transitions

6 memorable narrative essay writing practice exercises (PDF)

6 delightful descriptive paragraph and essay writing exercises  (PDF)

11 essential exercises for elementary writing students (PDF)

 

3 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises  3 (with answers)

This exercise includes  vocabulary exercises for business   communication including office client and customer relationships: inflexible, strategy, developing, schedule, chaos, organized, allow, cautiously, approach, associate, embrace, impressed, morale, client, biased.

Essential academic vocabulary 3 (PDF)

 

4 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises 4  (with answers)

This worksheet includes  vocabulary for talking about people and social behavior:  stimulate, anecdote, stifle, norms, forgotten, trends, stumble, stifle, innovation, incentive, recognize, colleagues, facial, enthusiasm.

Essential academic vocabulary 4 (PDF)

 

5 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises 5  (with answers)

Essential vocabulary 5  includes  vocabulary for  describing life experiences and developments:  transition, assumption, contradiction, pinpointed, milestone, flip side, savvy, appeal, burden, compromised, breakthrough, reverse, interference, carefree, resented.

Essential academic vocabulary 5 (PDF)

Related Resources:

8 Business English vocabulary exercises

5 Cool Advertising & Branding Vocabulary & Language Exercises

 5 Describing Graphs  Language Exercises

5 Intercultural Body Language, Gestures and Etiquette Language Exercises

 

6 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises 6  (with answers)

Academic vocabulary exercises for a miscellaneous collection of words related to various aspects of corporate or academic life:  exchange, encounter, acquaintance, deviate, norm, expand, inspired, purchase, fabric, identify, structure, perspire, prodigy, recall, scraps.

Essential academic vocabulary 6 (PDF)

 

7 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises 7  (with answers)

Handout 7 includes more advanced vocabulary often used in discussions, debates and controversies: genetic, obstacle, identical, adverse, alterations, controversy, superfluous, substantial, avoided, reaction, hurdle, ethics, commodity, optimal, disturbed, examined, modification.

Essential academic vocabulary 7 (PDF)

 

8 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises 8  (with answers)

Handout 8 includes Business English related vocabulary that might be used for talking about colleagues and careers: attitude, radical, stand out, commute, career, rigorous, devote, hang around, peers, loyalty, weird, cut back, stable, dared.

Essential academic vocabulary 8 (PDF)

 

9 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises   9(with answers)

Handout 9 is a more random set of words encompassing  probability and social issues : reunion, synthetic, probability, mandatory, interactive, deprived, inconceivable, inadvertently, “face to face”, exploit, alert, adopt, adhesive.

Essential academic vocabulary 9 (PDF)

 

10 Essential  academic vocabulary exercises  10(with answers)

Handout 10 is another fairly random set  encompassing  words that  might used to talk about business, relationships and power :  regret, obsession, invest, intensity, integral, ingredient, beneficiary, fundamentals, era, dominate , collapsing, brutal, funding, apex, ambition.

Essential academic vocabulary 10 (PDF)

8 Dynamic Classroom Brainstorming Techniques

Brainstorming is a fantastic classroom activity. It works really well as an icebreaker. It is a great way to get students engaged. It can also heIp get the teacher get deeper into a topic with the participation of the class.  And  it is a wonderful way to assess and make use of the collective knowledge of the class.

1 Blank cluster diagram

The blank cluster  brainstorming and  organizing worksheet is ready for use on any topic. It’s great for extremely free range brainstorming.  Students can freely associate ideas to a topic. However, I prefer brainstorming templates that are  custom designed for specific topics (as can be seen below). I find these much more interesting.

Cluster Diagram (PDF)

2 Icebreaking brainstorms

Snappy and short icebreaking brainstorms are really useful for starting a class with new or elementary students.  It’s a great way to to immediately engage with students and assess their  abilities. Moreover, it’s a good  way of getting students to contribute without putting them under much pressure.

Brainstorming home life and families (PDF)

Brainstorming for a job interview roleplay(PDF)

Related Resources:

11 Classroom Debate and Discussion Language and Critical Thinking Activities

10 Essential Opinion and Argument Writing Templates and Worksheets

6 ESL Exercises and Worksheets for Talking about Cities

15 Captivating Computing, Technology and Innovation Vocabulary and Language Exercises

3 Brainstorming with cues

Sometimes when you are introducing a specific topic to a class, it’s really useful to use  cues to get things going.  The cues can be verbal or visual or a combination of both.  It really helps guide the brainstorm  along a particular path. These brainstorms can become quite extended and bring out a lot of ideas and language.

Brainstorming social trends (PDF)

Brainstorming parts of speech (PDF)

4  Guided brainstorm

The guided brainstorm is similar to brainstorming with cues but it’s useful when you want to aim for something specific like an essay title. And if you are teaching  argumentative essay writing  to students learning the English language, it’s useful to create a guided brainstorm template. This might meangetting students to complete sentences with certain ways and  generating  an essay  question or title  for  a  specific topic.

Brainstorming controversial issues (PDF)

5 Language brainstorming

Brainstorming can also focus on language. It can be used to be explore collocations and ideas associated with a set of words.

Brainstorming collocations for imperatives (PDF)

6 Brainstorming pros and cons (debates and discussions)

Of course, one of the best brainstorms in the classroom is the  brainstorming of pros and cons of an issue. The range of ideas of a class working together can be quite surprising.

Is it better to work for yourself or someone else ?(PDF)

7 Brainstorming with pictures

With huge image libraries these days, it’s quite easy to put together a collection of images focused on very specific topics. This really helps to get students thinking and it’s also surprising as students interpret pictures in different ways.

Disadvantages of mobile devices (PDF)

Brainstorming advantages and disadvantages of working for a big company (PDF)

8 Brainstorming with  logic

Some of the most popular brainstorm templates are for academic writing formats, including classification and cause/effect. These help students organize their ideas logically.

Classification organizer (PDF)

9 Cause/effect organizer

Cause/effect organizer (PDF)