🎯 Soft Skills
Communication, Teamwork & Professional Development for the Modern Workplace
The people skills every workplace needs: listening, teamwork, handling conflict, managing time, and keeping a conversation going. Some lessons come in more than one version, with a Listening & Speaking or Reading & Writing focus at different levels. Pick the one that fits your class.
🌏 Cross-Cultural Communication →
🗣️ Socializing & Small Talk →
Soft Skills at Work
Empathy, teamwork, time and tough conversations in the workplace.
🤖 Soft Skills in the Age of AI
Added: March 2026, new versions September 2026 • 3 versions • Lower Pre-Intermediate to Pre-Intermediate
AI can write a report in seconds. But can it read the room, calm an angry client, or feel? This collection explores the human skills machines can’t replace, with vocabulary like empathy, communication, active listening, collaboration, conflict resolution, resilience, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. The listening versions include a dialogue about calming a difficult customer, a role play between two managers, critical thinking sets on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence, Work Ethic, and Teamwork and Collaboration, and Talk Zone scene cards such as Handling a Customer Complaint. The reading version asks What can’t a robot do? through a story about a logistics worker and an AI-written apology email, an article built on 2025–2026 hiring surveys, and four People or Machines? scenarios. The newer versions end with a Discover Your Strongest Soft Skills quiz.
🎧 Listening & Speaking • Pre-Intermediate and above
🎧 Listening & Speaking • Lower Pre-Intermediate
📖 Reading & Writing • Lower Pre-Intermediate
🤝 Soft Skills Workplace Role Plays
Added: 2026
What do you say when you have to deliver bad news, push back on your boss, or admit you got it wrong? These are the conversations most people dread — and the ones students rarely get to practise. This collection drops learners into the workplace moments that really test communication, with each scenario built around a single skill: giving feedback, negotiating, de-escalating, setting boundaries. Students play both sides — manager and employee, agent and customer, client and freelancer — picking up vocabulary like de-escalation, self-advocacy, accountability, take ownership, core hours, push back, capacity, deliverables, and going forward. Scenarios range from a hybrid-work request and a tense performance review to a wellbeing check-in, a cross-cultural mix-up, and a freelancer rate negotiation — all scaffolded with sentence stems and word banks so pre-intermediate learners can hold their own.
Scenarios Include:
AI Work Feedback • Performance Review • Hybrid Work Request • Calming an Upset Customer • Asking for a Raise • Owning a Mistake • Disagreeing with Your Boss • Networking • and more
🗣️ Role Plays • Pre-Intermediate
⏰ Time Management
Added: April 2026
Why does the day always seem to run out before the to-do list does? This lesson tackles the habits and language of managing time well — prioritizing, delegating, planning ahead, and protecting your focus — with vocabulary like prioritize tasks, delegate responsibilities, avoid distractions, set deadlines, beat the clock, plan ahead, stay organized, and time-sensitive phrases such as let’s circle back, fast-track this, and this is time-sensitive. Activities include a workplace dialogue about taming email and meetings, three real-world priority-ranking scenarios (a Black Friday store rush, a dinner-service rush, and a last-minute office crisis), modal-verb role plays, retail-manager critical thinking sets, and a Discover Your Time Management Style quiz that reveals your top three skills.
🎧 Listening & Speaking • Pre-Intermediate and above
🤔 Making Decisions
Added: April 2026
Stay or leave? Save or spend? Decision fatigue is real — and so is the language we need to talk about it. Students learn how to weigh options and explain their reasoning, with vocabulary like make a decision, budget, overwhelming, alternatives, take a risk, and persuade. Activities include a listening quiz on decision-making styles, a workplace dialogue about a job offer, a present perfect grammar role play, critical thinking worksheets, an opinion completion exercise, a bar chart reading, and a Talk Zone with four illustrated scene cards.
🎧 Listening & Speaking • Pre-Intermediate and above
More People Skills
Knowing yourself, and handling complaints calmly. For conversation and small talk lessons, see Socializing & Small Talk.
😤 Complaints and Annoyances
Added: 2025
Cold soup. Late deliveries. Loud neighbors. There’s an art to saying “this isn’t right” — without making things worse. These carefully sequenced activities cover everyday frustrations and how to handle them, with vocabulary like refund, overcharged, complaint form, dissatisfied, and compensation. Activities include a listening quiz, gap-fill dialogues, collocation practice, a grammar-focused restaurant role play between a manager and customer, critical thinking exercises on when and how to complain effectively, and pronunciation work on contractions, linking, and word stress.
🎧 Listening & Speaking • High Elementary and above
🪞 Personality Self-Awareness in 2026
Added: 2026
Your group chat. Your playlists. Your weekend habits. They say more about you than you think. This lively collection helps students explore personality through their own digital and social lives, with vocabulary like optimistic, reserved, outgoing, self-centered, reliable, and creative. Activities include a listening quiz on personality in digital life, a group-project dialogue, intensifier grammar practice, critical thinking worksheets on online communities and social media traits, a Discover Your Personality Type quiz, and a Roommate Search role play with character cards.
🎧 Listening & Speaking • Pre-Intermediate and above
📬 Get the Full Lessons on Substack
Every version comes with all worksheets, audio, and answer keys. New lessons arrive every week.