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This lesson plan considers pragmatic violations of openings, closings, and requests. These humorous role plays involve continuing a conversation when one person is trying to end it, being overly direct, and providing an overly informative answer to the greeting “How are you?” Textbooks may lack complete openings and closings, so it is worthwhile to spend time on post-openings and pre-closings. Politeness in English may be problematic for EFL learners because of the lack of grammatical forms that mark it.

This lesson plan aims to raise awareness of problems that can be caused by using inappropriate forms of address. It is meant for intermediate to advanced students. After students are familiar with the topic of terms of address, they discuss two situations where an inappropriate form of address was used. This specifically looks at the addressing of those who hold doctorate level degrees such as M.D. or Ph.D. as well as potential assumptions of gender. EFL students are often unaware that professionals in a university setting are rarely called “Mr.” or “Mrs.”

This article discusses the teaching of intercultural awareness together with language in foreign contexts. Following a brief discussion of what culture means, the author presents a three-stage intercultural approach for teaching EFL students. For each stage, the author explains the goals and provides five activities as examples. As a follow-up, the author shares challenges for this approach and possible solutions.

This lesson in Teaching Pragmatics focuses on raising pragmatic awareness in students using the concept of "mood."

Pragmatic competence is an important part of communicative competence, yet it is often insufficiently addressed. This article outlines a program of four lessons on the speech acts of openings and closings. Lessons examine dialogues for cultural differences regarding forms of address, abruptness, expected responses, and so on. Students also consider pre-closing phrases, ways to express politeness, and formality. Finally, students expand an artificial dialogue to make it more realistic. Activities include translation, pair work, creative writing, class discussion, and role play.

This lesson in Teaching Pragmatics aims to help students develop appropriate written request strategies.

This lesson aims helps students navigate requests by identifying pragmatically appropriate language.

The theme of health offers a variety of language-learning possibilities. This three-part lesson plan for young learners can be adapted to other audiences. It includes a reading, a dialogue, and a listening script. The first lesson asks learners to analyze lifestyle choices and give advice. The second lesson takes students to a sporting goods store, where they consider the language they need to talk with a sales clerk. The third lesson is about food choices, including ways to prepare foods. A follow-up activity researches how a famous athlete stays healthy.

Have you ever wondered what causes earthquakes? The Federal Emergency Management Agency presents a six unit activity package that assesses student knowledge of earthquakes and provides information about preparedness and emergency management.

This webinar, "Cross-Cultural Competence in the Business English Classroom," will explore strategies to help your students engage more effectively with their business counterparts from all over the world.