Free ESL Conversation Lesson Plan: Soft Drink Wars

When your conversation class has lost its fizz, this lesson will be a refreshing change. After running a conversation class for a long period of time, ESL students start to become bored with conversations about themselves and their family lives. It's your job as an ESL teacher to stop this boredom. This lesson will have them living out their marketing dreams and get them talking about something they all know.

Level:

ESL Intermediate or Business Intermediate speaking level or above

Vocabulary:

Brand Name, Demographics, Target Market, Advertise, Competitors, Slogan, Domestic, International, Market Research

Aims:

Encourage verbal fluency by discussing principles of marketing and products for different types of people. Increase student to student interaction.

Materials:

You will need slips of paper for each group with one of the following written on them: The Businessman's Drink, The Housewife's Drink, and The Student's Drink. Also, each member of the group will need a question worksheet for this activity (questions provided at the end of this article.)

Activity:

Arrange the students into groups of 5 or 6. If your ESL class is mixed ability, try to place the more advanced students into groups with those who are in lower levels. For the advanced students, this can test their ability to explain new concepts in English. For the lower level students, this can boost their confidence if the group is run effectively. Use of L1 should be restricted for this activity.

Each group should then receive one of target market slips and a worksheet for each student. This activity will be more interesting if some groups have the same target market. Once students receive their worksheet, you will want to check their understanding of the vocabulary involved in the lesson. The groups will have to work together to answer the questions on the worksheet. As they are doing this, you should circulate and have each group explain their answers and their process. Challenging their responses is essential to this activity.