LESSON OVERVIEW

This Business English worksheet for B1 students gives them opportunity to speak about different businesses and challenges they might face as well as analyse case studies of companies experiencing some problems.

This is a Flipped Classroom lesson plan. In a nutshell, it means that the first part of the lesson needs to be done by students at home. Learn more about flipped classroom and how we implement it in these lesson plans in our post.

PRE-CLASS ACTIVITIES

First, students have to learn vocabulary that they will use throughout the lesson. In the first task, they just need to study the mind map to learn different synonyms of the word company. Next, they move to an exercise on collocations and have to complete the gaps in phrases by selecting correct verbs. In that task students learn phrases such as: keep up with demand, juggle children and a career, source something locally, find a niche in the market, etc. To practise the vocab, they complete sentences with the correct verbs from the previous exercise.

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

Intro

The in‐class part starts with a general discussion about setting up a business, the advantages and disadvantages of being your own boss and running an enterprise, as well as reasons for opening a company. After that, students work in groups and discuss what challenges different businesses might face (e.g. a multinational corporation, a tech start-up, a state-owned enterprise).

Listening comprehension (video) and speaking part

This section starts with a pre-watching task. Students match the listed establishments to challenges they might face. Later, they watch a series of short interviews to check the answers. In the second listening comprehension task, they need to fill in the gaps with words they hear in the video. After doing the video‐related tasks, students discuss the challenges their business or the company they work for faces and has to deal with.

Finally, this Business English worksheet for B1 students finishes with 2 case studies that students should analyse in groups. Give each pair one case, let them analyse and discuss it, then you can either ask them to report their recommendations to the other group or, if you have a big enough group, you may get pairs doing the same case study together so that they can compare their opinions.