ESL Lesson Plan: Describing Graphs and Tables

Business English students will want to know how to describe trends going on in their profession or in their companies. They may have to give a presentation in which they use graphs to demonstrate what is going on currently in their sales departments, or they may have to use graphs or tables in any number of other situations, such as writing reports. Use this lesson plan to help guide your students in learning vocabulary related to describing graphs and tables and to give them the confidence they need to give a presentation discussing trends to their colleagues.

Objective: Students will learn how to use vocabulary describing trends for use in business presentations and reports.

Level: High Intermediate to Advanced

Length: 1 hour

Materials:

-Markers/chalk

-White/chalkboard

-Copies of an example of a graph showing sales of a company over a year-long period for a particular product. Have enough for half of the class. Make copies of another, similar graph for the other half of the class.

-Copies of a short text that describes trends and changing points on a table that accompanies the graph.

-Copies of an article about a study released that describes changes over time.

Target Language:

Verbs

increase

decrease

remain

rise

fall

peak

plummet

slump

collapse

climb

level off

soar

fluctuate

stay the same

Adjectives/Adverbs

dramatic(ally)

sharp(ly)

steep(ly)

steady/steadily

slight(ly)

Nouns

increase

decrease

peak

trough

collapse

slump

Warm-Up

Draw an example graph on the board. The line or bars should fluctuate over time. Ask the students to describe what is going on at different times on the graph. Encourage them to explain what is going on over a three or six month period.

Write words they know to describe the graph on the board. Some of them may already know some of the target vocabulary. If they do, continue to teach those words, but do not spend as much time on them during the lesson as you do the others that are new. (10 minutes)

Presentation

Elicit any other vocabulary words the students may know by pointing out other trends or significant changes at a point in time on the graph that the students did not notice. Write any words on the graph to illustrate the concepts discussed. (15 minutes)

Practice

Split students into pairs. Give one student in each pair one of the copies of graphs. Give the other student in each pair the other graph. Ask students to take turns describing their graphs after they take a minute to study their graphs. The student listening writes down on a piece of paper what he hears the other student saying, especially writing the vocabulary words and phrases he hears. A few students can volunteer to explain the trends they heard other students talk about to the whole class

Encourage students to use the vocabulary words written on the board. Walk around and listen for correct usage, especially of nouns that double as verbs and correctly-used adjectives and adverbs. (15 minutes)

Have students read a short text that describes an accompanying table to themselves. Ask them to underline any word they do not know. Read the text to them out loud, and then have students read sections of the text out loud to the rest of the class until the whole text is read. Go over any words or ideas they underlined. (15 minutes)

Wrap-Up

Ask students what their favorite words were that they learned, and ask them to use it in a sentence out loud. Pass out a news article that describes a study recently released that describes changes over time. Ask students to write a paragraph summarizing the article, and using as many of the vocabulary words as possible. (5 minutes).

Reference:
http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/elt/catalogue/0-19-457589-6-a.pdf