LESSON OVERVIEW

This time the worksheet is not based on a TED talk but on a Think Big video, in this case Dan Ariely’s speech on psychology of motivation at work. This Business English lesson will allow your students to learn and practice 8 motivation idioms used in business. They will also have plenty of chances to talk about how companies motivate and demotivate employees and watch a video that tells how to tackle it.

VOCABULARY

The lesson consists of two sections: vocabulary and video. Students start with a pair discussion exercise during which they rank things that demotivate them at work. Then, they move to the main vocabulary task in which they have to get the meaning of 8 idioms connected to motivation and match them with their definitions. Next, they will have to use these idioms to fill in the gaps in questions which they will later have to ask and answer in pairs.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION AND DISCUSSION

What follows is the second section which is all about Dan Ariely’s video. The speech itself is introduced with a short description, then, students will watch the video and answer 5 comprehension questions. The lesson finishes off with a few discussion points on what Dan Ariely has to say about motivation.

This lesson is a bit longer than the rest, but I found the topic intriguing and worth talking about, so I added some idioms and lots of points to talk about and opportunities to use new vocabulary.