A selection of English ESL business english conversation printables

You should use this activity as a review or just after you teach business conversation. Using this activity you can pay attencion to yours student's pronunciation, if he or she is using the structures you teach

Business English

One-page Business Idioms sheet includes simple visuals, clear meanings, and example sentences for popular business expressions.
Ideal for:
✔ ESL / EFL Business English
✔ Adult learners
✔ Workplace communication training
✔ Vocabulary warm-ups or posters

Print-ready and easy to use!

Business English Idioms – Visual Poster

Pairwork - Roleplay activity. The conversations take place at the dinner table following a conference. They require the learner to demonstrate both tact and politeness in English. Can also be used with individual learners if the teacher takes one of the roles. Good for both online and face-to-face.

Business English - Roleplays

This short lesson introduces learners to modals used to soften requests, make tone more diplomatic, and maintain professionalism in email communication.
Perfect for business English learners, office professionals, client-facing roles, and international teams.

Mastering Modals for Polite, Precise, and Professional Emails


Embark on a fun journey with Business English Quest! This board game is perfect for adults looking to improve their English skills for the workplace. Roll the dice, move around the board, and tackle challenges.




Business English - boardgame advanced

Business English activities. Phone conversation vocabulary for business English students. Useful Phrases. Word format (you can edit it). How to answer the phone and how to ask for specific information.

Business English - Phone conversation vocabulary

This activity should practise small talk skills in a working environment. Work in pairs or groups. There are more possibilities how to work with it. 

E.g. one student takes a slip, read aloud the situations and with a partner try to play roles (B2 students). Or divide your students to groups, each group has a situation and together finds out (or write down) possible questions and answers. Or you can discuss it with all class etc. 

Small talk activity for Business English

These are Business English discussion questions that get students thinking as well as practice and improve their conversational skills. As you can see, business English topics and questions are a fun way to provoke your students into thinking about the business realm in different or new ways.

Discussion Questions-Business

This activity concludes the topic of transferable skills and advice-giving grammar points from Unit 1 in B1 Business Partner. Can be done as conversation or writing practice. Students read 'posts' from a careers forum and write/say 3 pieces of advice for each poster, using target language from the textbook. Even if you're not teaching Business English, you can adapt this activity to your needs, such as teaching general advice-giving useful language.
Please edit as you like!
-Daria

Giving advice (Business English - "Business Partner" B1, Unit 1)

Watch the video on expressions to use to agree, to disagree, to partially agree, to ask for opinions, to politely interrupt, and to resolve conflicts. Make note. On the worksheet, there are fifteen conversations which must be completed with the correct expressions. All the examples are within a business context. An Answer Key is provided.

Agreement, Disagreement, Partial Agreement ... Business Context

Hey ESL Teachers!



Business English lesson materials are always high in demand, so I decided to publish a free lesson on Fluentize based on a short video about the basics of business etiquette.



I would say this lesson plan is probably most suitable for intermediate (B1) level students who are on the edge of upper intermediate (B2).



In order to view the video, please visit the lesson page on Fluentize via the link below.



https://app.fluentize.com/lesson/business-etiquette-basics



The lesson materials attached in this post include the first half of the lesson — the preview discussion material, the sections for pre-teaching the vocabulary in the video, and a listening comprehension exercise that goes along with the featured video.



You can access all the post-viewing sections when downloading it from Fluentize — including activities on vocabulary context usage, prefixes / parts of speech, rewriting sentences, follow-up conversational material, the quiz & review section, and the teacher's guide.



As you'll see in the lesson plan, the lesson starts off by discussing proper business etiquette. Students then do a short activity in which they transform some words into their correct parts of speech using the prefix. The examples featured in this lesson plan are...



understand ---> misunderstanding

respect ---> disrespected

cooperate ---> uncooperative



After watching the video and completing the first post-viewing section, there is a second post-viewing part that focuses on some grammar using the conjunction although based on the following quote from the video:



"Although workplace culture and expectations can vary between companies, the basics of business etiquette can be used in almost any kind of workplace."



You can follow everything up with additional discussion material based on the following topics...



- Impact of COVID-19 on business etiquette

- Business etiquette in different countries

- Socializing with colleagues

- Social media and colleagues

- Business lunch etiquette

- Video calling etiquette for business



From the creator’s standpoint, my favorite part of the lesson is the section focusing on the parts of speech and prefixes. I find these types of activities for parts of speech and prefixes in the context of word transformation to be so practical for students and really helps them develop their vocabulary skills.



I also realize that many English language teachers are now teaching in an online environment. For those of you who are, I recommend trying out our interactive lesson plan for it (which is the one attached in this post). The interactive lesson is basically a digital version of the lesson materials that comes equipped with interactive fields for your students to write answers within.



I hope you have a great lesson exploring the basics of business etiquette with your students.



Thanks!



-Jake from Fluentize

Business Basics Etiquette - ESL Lesson Plan

The worksheet includes 8 idiomatic expressions related to saving and spending money. You will find a contextual dialogue + idioms meaning + TWO exercises for practice.

Idioms about money

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

Articles: Definite or indefinite article (a, an or the)

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

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how to accuse somebody of something in English

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how to express agreement /disagreement in English

how to express approval and disapproval  in English

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how to express likelihood, probability in English

how to express likes and dislikes in English

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how to give permission, authorization in English

how to inform somebody about some news in English

how to interpret what was said in English

how to keep a conversation going in English

how to make guesses about something in English

how to make, accept and refuse offers in English

how to order or make a booking in English

how to persuade, convince people in English

how to praise people and express appreciation in English

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how to refuse and object to something in English

how to remind people of something in English

how to rephrase, paraphrase what was said in English

how to say thank you, express gratitude in English

Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Working with Paragraphs: ordering, titling

Role play, miming, drama activity or improv game

Pictionary (picture dictionary) or picture matching

Writing an opinion essay (persuasive essay)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

12 Business english conversation English ESL worksheets pdf & doc