Mastering the Art of Invitations and Requests
25th April 2025
For the latest materials for teaching invitations, requests, direct and indirect questions go to Substack:
Essential English Interaction Skills: Reimagined
Invitations, Requests, Indirect Questions and Information Seeking
1 Invitations: accepting and refusing (with answers and audio)
Students try to complete the invitations conversations using the pictures and the useful vocabulary. Or you use the audio and you can have a listening lesson instead/as well.
Short invitation dialogues (PDF)
(see the YouTube version of this exercise)
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2 Invitations and excuses
This exercise is a more advanced one than the one above. It aims to expand students’ vocabulary.
Extract from Invitations and excuses
3 Making requests – office dialogues
This is a more advanced exercise than the one below. So, it should be used after students understand the basics of making requests.
4 Movie invitation (pair work speaking)
Movie invitations are fun. Invitations can be practiced using calendars and event schedules.
5 Making requests around town (with answers and audio)
Students try to write commonly used requests and short conversations that are appropriate for the situations shown in the pictures. And then listen to the conversations to compare and check their answers.
(see the YouTube video)
6 Requests, advice and commands speaking skills (with answers and audio)
This is a speaking/listening exercise and worksheet for English language learners to practice deciding whether to give commands, advice or make polite requests in a variety of situations shown in the pictures. This exercise can be done as a listening exercise now that I have added audio.
Requests, advice and commands speaking skills (PDF)
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7 Making Polite Requests (with answers)
This is a grammar exercise and worksheet for English language learners to practice making polite requests in the different ways and different scenarios. Students match the expressions on the left to the pictures and write complete requests with the appropriate request phrase.
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ESL Listening Activities Guide
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8 Invitation and Request Dialogues for Everyday Scenarios
8 Classroom requests & queries (with answers)
This elementary exercise focuses on common classroom requests.
Classroom requests (PDF)
9 Hotel dialogues: making requests exercise
This is an hotel dialogues exercise focusing on common conversational exchanges between hotel staff and guests.
Hotel dialogues: making requests (PDF)
