How Things Go Wrong – Problems & Solutions Vocabulary 

Get 52 problem-solving vocabulary speaking cards for upper-intermediate and advanced learners that teach B2-C1 adults the words professionals use when things go wrong - setback, bottleneck, oversight, shortcoming, misunderstanding, delay, disruption, breakdown, constraint, workaround, trade-off, root cause - and get them analysing, fixing and talking about real problems from their own jobs.

• Learn 12 problems-and-solutions nouns with word cards that give the collocations (suffer a setback, hit a bottleneck, due to an oversight, work within constraints, come up with a workaround, get to the root cause), a clear meaning and a talk task about the student's own work: where the bottleneck is in their team, which workaround has become normal, which trade-off they still think about.
• Choose the most precise word with Name the Problem: sixteen workplace situations (a project blocked by one approver, last year's prices left in a contract, a client who reads "end of the week" differently, a server that goes down with every newsletter), three candidate words on each card, and a THEN TALK question that moves straight into the student's own experience; a Close but Different slide separates delay from setback, bottleneck from constraint and oversight from shortcoming, and a teacher key sits on the last slide, never on the card.
• Solve problems out loud with Fix It, twelve C1 cases built around a four-question frame - what is really going on, what can we do today, what is the permanent fix, what is the trade-off - plus a teacher pushback the student must answer ("We can't change our system this year", "The launch date is in the contract").
• Tell real stories with Debrief: twelve cards that ask for a true story from the student's work or life - the project that slipped, the trip, the deadline, the mistake, the thing everyone complains about - told with two or three target words and followed by the question a good manager asks afterwards.