For adults, the festive season can sometimes seem like one long run of social events, from office parties to meals with partners’ families. Here’s a lesson plan from Alastair Horne and Jo Timerick for a 50 minute adult class at B1 or higher that helps you to prepare your learners for the small talk that such events always require, and also offer them an enjoyable way to end the semester ahead of any break for the New Year!
Prepare the class by building a wordlist
Start by announcing that today’s lesson will end with a special occasion – a festive party – but that before the party can begin, they’ll need to do a bit of preparation.
That preparation starts with some brainstorming. In small groups, ask your learners to write down as many words connected with the festive season as they can in 2 minutes. At the end of those 2 minutes, they feed their words back to you, and you write them on the board. If your class includes learners from a variety of backgrounds, encourage groups to share vocabulary that’s specific to their own cultural experiences. This will give you an opportunity to let your students learn more about each other, and will also help them to prepare the relevant vocabulary to talk about their own experiences later on.
You can supplement the vocabulary that students suggest with words of your own. You can find inspiration for these in our article looking at some of the most popular words and expressions used today. Make sure to check that your chosen words do not include any that may be culturally inappropriate, such as ‘hangover’. You may also want to be careful when discussing the meaning of certain festive vocabulary, such as ‘Christmas stockings’!
Get learners comfortable with the seasonal vocabulary
Now ask the students to work in pairs for 5 minutes, looking up the meanings of any vocabulary they are not familiar with, using a print or online dictionary. You may wish to assign different words to different pairs, to ensure that as many words as possible are covered.
Ask pairs to share their definitions with the class to establish the correct definitions. Then, working again in pairs, ask students to write 5 sentences and 5 questions using this vocabulary. Make sure to walk around the classroom observing and offering assistance. Encourage open questions that will keep the conversation going. After a few minutes, again ask pairs to share some of their questions and sentences with the class, confirming correct forms.
Group the students into new pairs – perhaps by asking one of each pair to turn to the back to form a pair with the student behind – and ask them to practice asking and answering their questions for five more minutes. Again, rehearse some of these questions in front of the class, modelling answers where appropriate.
It’s party time!
Finally, announce that it’s party time. Break out some festive snacks – you might even encourage learners to bring their own – and hold your own seasonal event, giving learners an opportunity to use their newly-learned vocabulary to talk about their own experiences and learn about each other’s. With a more advanced class, you could even discussing the research showing how the language of the season is changing over time.
For more support with preparing learners for small talk, Shanthi Cumaraswamy Streat shares 30 phrasal verbs for small talk in business.