Business English Student Level: Pre-intermediate Topic: Using line graphs to report on product performance Before Send the student a couple of line charts similar to those she uses in her role along with a glossary of terms used to describe them, e.g. peak, trough, plummet, soar, decline, climb etc. The student should use the glossary to label the graphs as much as possible and look up any words they are unfamiliar with. The student should also send the teacher 3 or 4 line graphs they use in their role. During Activity 1: 8 minutes After initial pleasantries, share your screen with the student to show the line graphs you sent them and ask the student to describe them using the glossary terms. Help as needed throughout the activity and go through any vocabulary the student didn’t know. Activity 2: 4 minutes Highlight on screen individual points on a line graph and ask the student to describe them — e.g. “there’s a trough in August”, “the line peaks in the middle of December” etc. Encourage them to use sentences rather than just individual words. Activity 3: 12 minutes Now use the line graphs the student sent you. The student should describe the performance of a product as shown on their graphs using full sentences — e.g. sales of the product climbed from January to March and then peaked at the beginning of April. They can add extra information to explain why each of these trends happened — e.g. This is because the company had a large marketing campaign from January to February which resulted in extra sales. Help the student correct mistakes with the glossary terms as you go and take notes on any other mistakes (pronunciation, lexis, etc) as you go. Then make statements about the graphs, e.g. sales dropped in March — the student should decide if the statements are true or false, and if true, decide which graph you are referring to. Activity 4: 6 minutes Ask the student how well they think they did in the activity — were there any terms they could use in place of the ones they chose? Are there any they think they used incorrectly? Run through the notes you took as the student was speaking. Highlight the errors they made and see if the student can correct the mistakes themselves. Don’t forget to praise them on what they did well too! Set the after-class activities. After Ask the student to draw a line graph of their own. They could base it on their companies’ performance, a particular product’s performance, or even their own performance over the last year. Then the student should write a paragraph describing the graph using the terminology used in class and giving reasons for each of the trends.
