Making a Return: Group Activities for the ESL Classroom
Interactive Speaking Activities for ESL Students
Create more opportunities for students to practice their speaking skills in their ESL class. FLOW Speak’s group activities are designed with a focus on real-world application. Each ready-made activity requires communication and collaboration between students as they build their confidence in speaking English. Each speaking activity can be used as a standalone lesson or as one part of a larger unit.
Free ESL Speaking Materials
Teachers do an incredible amount of work preparing for lessons. FLOW Speak wants to help make lesson prep for ESL instructors easier through these premade speaking activities. Each activity includes all the materials needed to facilitate the activity in an ESL classroom. As well, these speaking activities focus on real-world topics such as shopping, travel, health, work, and interpersonal communication. These group activities focus on topics ideal for adult and young adult English language learners.
Group Activity: Making a Return
Assist your intermediate English students in dealing with customer service with this ESL role-play activity. While working in pairs, students will practice returning various purchases to different businesses. They will practice making a polite request, explaining the reason, and answering questions such as “exchange or store credit?” Through this activity, students should improve their confidence in speaking to a customer service representative or sales associate to help them solve common shopping problems.
This speaking activity encourages English language learners to think on their feet through a role-play of a practical life scenario. Practicing language use in real-world situations will help students progress through an intermediate or CEFR B1 level where they employ their language skills in familiar and commonly encountered matters.
How to Implement ‘Making a Return’
Your students will work in pairs to successfully complete a return or exchange through a role-play speaking activity. One student will take on the role of sales associate while the other uses the prompt and receipt to ask to return an item. Through this activity, students will practice shopping vocabulary and navigating a customer service interaction. Designed for practical application, this speaking activity should help your ESL students to succeed in a real-world return or exchange request.
In the teaching materials available for download, detailed instructions for teachers, an example dialogue, and prompts for students are included. The ‘Teacher Instructions’ provide information on delivery, necessary materials, enabling objectives, and possible homework. The homework suggests four related FLOW Speak lessons to be assigned for individual speaking practice to reinforce the lesson. The lessons related to ‘Making a Return’ include the ‘Exchange’ Expression Lesson, ‘Refund’ Expression Lesson, ‘Returning a Product’ Booster Lesson, and ‘Returning a Defective Product’ AI Talk Lesson. If you are interested in learning more about using FLOW Speak lessons in your classroom, contact achieve@flowspeak.io.
Download the materials
FLOW Speak Activity - Making a Return.pdf
