Communication at work: a business conversation lesson

If you are still teaching this week, as I am, it likely means you have business students. At least in Brazil most regular classes have wrapped up in preparation for the holidays.

Because fo that, I have decided to post a business lesson I’m using with my last few students this week. I personally hate talking on the phone, so I saw myself in the article and thought it made for some great discussions of business practices. This is aimed at adult students who are B1 or B2.

As a side note, this will be the last lesson posted this year, so thanks everyone for stopping by and spreading the word about the blog.

Like my Addiction: a conversation lesson

Some of my friends who also post lessons online have tackled some difficult topics recently. Beatriz Solino posted a lesson about abortion and Cecilia Nobre had one about rape. Although I must admit I’m not brave enough to discuss those topics with my own students, talking about these lessons with them and also with my dear friend Natália Guerreiro motivated me to work on today’s lesson.

A couple of months ago a popular Instagram account revealed itself to be a publicity stunt to raise awareness of alcoholism in social media. This, in turn, was covered by many newspapers and TV channels and the news went viral. You can find a link to the Instagram account that started things here.

This is aimed at adolescents (16-18) and adults who are B2 or C1, but it can also be used with B1 students if you include pre-teaching stages before the video and the text. The topic may be controversial in some cultures (it is a PARSNIP topic, after all), so be mindful of your own students and their backgrounds.

Word of the Year: a conversation lesson

I’m a big word nerd and I usually pay attention to dictionary news. About a year ago I posted a lesson on the topic of new words that had been added to the Oxford Online Dictionary. I’m also interested in which words different dictionaries pick as their ‘word of the year’ and a couple of weeks ago my friend Debora Schisler shared an article on Facebook on this topic. And thus a lesson was born. 🙂

Now, this one is aimed at advanced students, both because of the length of the text and because some of the words mentioned in the article are very abstract, which may cause difficulties for lower level students. Age-wise, I have used it with both adults and teenagers and both had a lot to say about post-truth, which is definitely relevant about the political moment in Brazil.