7 Awesome Ideas for Business English Classes

Liven up your business English classes and encourage high student talk time with these fun and creative activities.

1. Negotiations

In pairs students role-play a negotiation. Each side will be given a sheet listing demands and concessions. Each side of the negotiation is awarded points for the type of concessions they get from the other side. For example, if one side manages to get a 25% discount, they get 10 points and the other side gets 0.

Also read: 7 Great Resources for Teaching Business English

2. Telephone call role-plays

Telephone role-plays can be used with a variety of different topics such as leaving and taking a message, placing an order, arranging a meeting, making a complaint etc. The main point is to give students the chance to practice communicating in English without the visual clues that are present in face-to-face conversations. The easiest way to do this is to have students sit back-to-back during the exercise.

3. Yearly comparison information gap

Students are provided with information sheets containing details about a company’s performance in the current month against its performance in the same month the previous year. Some of the information on each student’s sheet is missing and they have to ask their partner questions to find out the missing information.

4. Business diaries – arranging a meeting

In pairs students are each given a diary with their appointments for the week ahead, each diary is different. The students role-play a phone conversation where they try to arrange a time to meet that fits in with both their schedules. E.g. ‘Are you free Thursday lunchtime?’ “Sorry, I’m meeting the area managers then. How about 10 a.m. Friday?’

5. Dragon’s Den/Shark Tank

The class is split into several groups of two or more students depending on class size. These groups are then divided into inventors or investors. The inventors are given a product sheet with information about a certain new product they have invented. The investors are given a question sheet with questions to ask about the product and a budget of $1,000,000 to invest in each invention. Each inventor group visits an investor group and pitches their product. The investors ask questions and decided whether to invest in the product or not and how much to invest. The inventor group with the highest level of investment wins. For more advanced levels, students can create their own product and question sheets.

Also read: Top Online Lesson Plan Resources for New and Advanced Teachers

6. Tell me about your company

This is a good activity for a first lesson with a new group of students from the same company. Depending on the size of the class, split the students into pairs or small groups. The aim of the activity is for students to describe their company as they would to a visitor, played by the teacher. The teacher should make sure they have copies of brochures and other company literature that can be used in the activity.

7. Analyzing charts and graphs

Students are given charts and graphs. They need to study the graphs to extract specific information such as developing trends, product sales in different regions etc. Once they have finished analyzing the charts, the students can give a presentation to the class outlining what they have found.

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