Learn to pass on messages from meetings, phone calls and team chats with this task-based reported speech English lesson plan for Business English, built around a fictional website-launch team whose weekly meeting one colleague misses.
Main objectives of this material
- Develop practical vocabulary of idioms for meetings and teamwork, including on the same page, back to square one, a ballpark figure, cut corners, touch base, learn the ropes, get the hang of and call it a day, practised through a six-item matching task, a six-item meaning check, flashcards and speaking cards.
- Strengthen reading and speaking skills by working out meaning from context in a six-message team chat and an eight-turn project meeting about a client deadline moving from April to March, answering four comprehension questions and six true-or-false statements, and reacting to eight workplace situations with the right idiom and tone.
- Learn to tell natural idioms from corporate clichés by sorting eight sentences such as “quick touch base to align on our synergies”, rewriting an idiom-heavy manager’s email in plain English, and using go the extra mile, think outside the box, hit the ground running and the ball is in your court with real information.
What students are going to cover
What students are going to cover
In this lesson, students will explore which business English idioms are really used at work by reading a team chat from a new data analyst’s first day and an extract from a project meeting about a client deadline, a rejected design and a quicker map solution. They build vocabulary related to meetings, deadlines and teamwork, match six idioms to their meanings and choose the correct meaning for six more. Students apply a simple rule card to sort eight sentences into natural idioms and empty corporate clichés, rewrite an eight-idiom email in 60-80 words of plain English, and react to eight workplace situations with “Let’s not cut corners” and similar replies. The lesson ends with “Meeting Bingo”, a 10-minute meeting role play in which each student uses five idioms naturally and ticks the ones the teacher uses. The package includes a teacher version with answers, an interactive worksheet, 21 slides, homework with a 12-gap retrieval message and a team-chat update or voice note, flashcards and speaking cards. By the end of the lesson, learners will be able to understand twelve common work idioms in context, avoid sounding like a cliché, and use five idioms naturally in a real meeting.
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