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Telephone English poses a special problem for English learners because of the lack of visual clues used when speaking. Practicing telephone English in class can also seem rather artificial as exercises generally ask students to practice speaking on the phone through role-plays sitting together in small groups. Once they have learned the basic phrases used in telephoning, the main difficulty lies in communicating without visual contact.This telephone English lesson plan focuses on creating more realistic telephoning situations to encourage students to practice authentic telephoning situations.

The lesson has been planned to take place in a business setting. However, the lesson can be modified by the use of smart phones to fit any teaching situation.

Aim: Improving Telephoning Skills

Activity:Role playing using office telephone lines

Level: Intermediate to advanced

Telephone English Lesson Plan

• Review phrases used in telephoning with the telephone English match-up and quiz below.
• When students have finished, ask them to identify phrases that are not used in personal interactions. (i.e. This is Mr. Smith. Would you like to leave a message?)
• To begin practicing on the phone, ask students to pair up and then separate into different rooms. Make sure students have the right telephone numbers!
• Students should take turn initiating telephone calls as indicated in the short cues provided in the worksheet.
• Once students are comfortable with easy conversations, move on to more difficult conversations as outlined in the next activity.

• Ask each student to write out notes for a telephone conversation that they would typically have with a native speaker. Make sure students have a specific task in mind when writing out the notes. You can provide a few examples such as: Order 500 liters of olive oil, expect delivery by Friday, Use the company account for payment, Send to 2425 NE 23 St, Portland, Oregon, etc.

• Choose some notes and ask the student to leave the room and go into the next office. Now, this is when your acting skills come in handy! Take the various notes, call the other extension and ask for the person suggested by the student who wrote the notes.
• You've made it to Hollywood now! Play a variety of roles and act them out on the phone. Really put your students through the paces. You can be angry, impatient, in a hurry, etc.
• Once you have repeated this exercise, get students to call each other in their own offices to repeat the exercise. Remember it is crucial to actually use the phone, as the difficulty lies in understanding English over the phone. Make sure students get lots of practice with a variety of telephone role plays.

Finally, if can't use separate telephones lines in a business setting, use smart phones and ask students to go to separate rooms for their calls.

Remember that students will need lots of practice to improve their telephoning skills. To help create further opportunities, spend some time discussing specific telephoning tasks they can expect at work.

Telephone English Exercises

Match Up

Match the first half of the sentence to the second half to complete these common expressions used on the telephone.

Telephone Cues

Use the cues to make telephone calls with a partner.

• A telephones B in order to speak to the manager. Unfortunately, the manager is out. Leave a message.
• B telephones A and would like to speak to a colleague, Ms. Anderson. A asks B to wait and puts B through to Ms. Anderson.
• A telephones B and wants some basic information about the company. B describes what the company does and sells.
• B telephones A to complain about a broken product. A apologizes and redirects B to the appropriate customer service department.
• A telephones B to make an appointment with the personnel department. B suggests a time to speak to Mr. Taylor who works in the department. A agrees to come in at the suggested time.

• B telephones A asking for information about store opening hours. A provides the appropriate information.

Notes for a Call

It's a good idea to write out short notes before your make a telephone call. This will help you keep on track during your conversation.

• Write out some notes for a telephone call asking for specific information needed for your current job.
• Ask for specific details about a product, a meeting, or another event that you'll attend.
• Make a copy of your notes for a class mate and practice the conversation using the telephone.

What it is: A funny variation of telephone, played on paper instead of out loud. It’s a great game for creative teens or adults and can be quite entertaining. It’s always been a favorite among my family and friends.

Best for: Group of about 6 to 10.

What you need: Each player will need a piece of paper and a pencil or pen to write/draw with.

How to play: First set up the game by sitting all of your players in a circle indoors. This game might be hard to play around a table because each player needs to keep their paper secret from their neighbors, so playing in a living room on couches and chairs works great.

Then hand out paper and writing utensils to all the players. Have everyone write his or her name in small print at the bottom right of the page.

Everyone starts by writing a sentence at the top of his or her paper. It can be something random, true, abstract, from a song lyric, or about someone in the room. Here are some examples:

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• The kids all danced around the large oak tree.
• The dog chased the carefree butterflies to the end of the rainbow.
• If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a world it would be!
• Ted can’t find the right shoes to wear to prom.

Once everyone has a sentence at the top of his or her paper, everyone passes their paper to the player to their right.

Then everyone illustrates the sentence give to them with a small picture right underneath the sentence. So, for example, if Mary were given the sentence “The kids all danced around the large oak tree,” she might draw something like this:

Once everyone has finished drawing their sentences, everyone folds the top part of the paper over so it covers the first sentence, but not the picture. Then again, everyone passes their papers to the right.

Now everyone receives a paper with just a drawing visible, and everyone writes the sentence that presumably could have led to that picture (usually with some humor thrown in). For example, Bob, given the above picture, might write this sentence underneath: “Once there was a family of tree huggers.” Then everyone folds over their paper so only the last sentence is visible and passes the paper to the right.

And that’s basically how the game works. Everyone continues alternately writing sentences and drawing pictures, always covering up everything but the latest sentence or picture and passing to the right. Continue writing and drawing until you run out of room, or until everyone gets his or her paper back (that’s why you wrote names at the bottom at the beginning).

After everyone’s done writing and drawing, everyone unfolds the paper he or she has and begins to read and laugh at all the sentences and drawings, especially how in the world the first sentence turned into the last one. Then you can go around the circle one by one as everyone reads a paper out loud, or you can just pass them around so everyone can see the drawings clearly.

And then play another round!

Strategies: Really, the point of the game is to evoke laughter, so good strategies include being creative and off-the-wall with your sentences and pictures. Oh, and don’t worry, no artistic talent is required. It’s always kind of funny (or against the rules, depending on your viewpoint) when someone writes a sentence about a picture and throws in something that wasn’t there before, just to heighten the random factor. And when we play, most papers inevitably end up about people in the room, even if they don’t start out that way.

Example game

This game might be hard to visualize if you’ve never played it before, so here’s an example from a real-live game, to show you how one sentence can turn into a picture that can turn into a totally new sentence and on and on:

The kids all danced around the large oak tree.

Once there was a family of tree huggers.

After watching Fern Gully, Mrs. Mullen’s fourth grade class hurried out to the playground for a live reenactment.

The boys saw a picture of a girl and ran frantically to the park.

Many thanks to my sister and cousins for letting me use their artwork. 🙂