A complete ESL lesson plan for adults.

The full lesson plan, in text

Everything the deck above contains, written out: the reasoning, the target language, the sixty minutes stage by stage, what usually goes wrong and how you know it worked.

Why this lesson works

PPP suits A2 adults because the target modal 'would' for polite requests demands explicit form-meaning-use modeling before learners can produce it independently (DeKeyser 2007 on practice and proceduralisation). The restaurant context activates schema knowledge most adult learners share globally, providing strong contextual support for new lexis (Nation 2013). The Free Production stage uses a Harvard-style case brief (Christensen 1991) — 'The Allergic Diner' — to push beyond transactional ordering into pragmatic negotiation under stakes, drawing on the target chunks as ready-made language for real meaning (Nation 2013 on lexical phrases). Wrap-up uses delayed correction so production fluency is not interrupted (Willis 1996).

Learning objectives

Communicative

Order food in a restaurant politely and recover from a misunderstanding using 'would' and 'could' requests.

Grammatical

Use the modal verb 'would' in polite requests and 'could' in tentative questions; contrast with bare 'want' / 'will'.

Lexical

Restaurant lexical set: menu, waiter, bill, starter, main course, dessert — recognised receptively and produced in 4+ utterances.

Phonological

Produce the weak form /wəd/ in 'would' in connected speech, distinguishing from strong /wʊd/ in citation form.

Target language

Key vocabulary

menu · waiter · bill · starter · main course · dessert

Target structures

• I'd like ___, please.
• Could I have ___, please?
• What do you recommend?
• Excuse me, could you ___?
• Sorry, there's been a mix-up.

The sixty minutes, stage by stage

1. 1. Warm-up: eliciting the schema

   5 min · Teacher to class

   Teacher: Show a photo of a restaurant table on the board. Ask: 'When did you last eat out? What did you order?' Elicit 3-4 dishes onto the board. Do NOT correct vocabulary at this stage — fluency before accuracy.

   Students: Students share recent restaurant experiences in open class, naming dishes they remember.

2. 2. Presentation: modelling 'would' and 'could'

   15 min · Teacher to class

   Teacher: Present the target structures with a modelled dialogue, drawing out the weak form /wəd/ and the contracted 'I'd'. Contrast 'I will have' (statement of fact) against 'I would like' (polite request), and teach 'please' and 'excuse me' as obligatory pair words in restaurant requests.

   Students: Students notice the target forms in the modelled dialogue and repeat the contracted forms before analysing them.

3. 3. Controlled Practice: menu role-play

   15 min · Student to student

   Teacher: Hand out the menu and set up pairs as customer and waiter. Monitor for the target structures and log errors silently for the wrap-up. Enforce a role swap at the 5-minute mark with a clear signal.

   Students: In pairs, students order from the menu using the target frames, then swap roles so both practise both sides of the exchange.

4. 4. Production: 'The Allergic Diner' case brief

   20 min · Student to student

   Teacher: Give out the case: a diner has ordered a dish containing an allergen a colleague cannot eat, the order is already placed, and the situation must be resolved without embarrassing anyone. Step back and let the language do the work.

   Students: Students negotiate a real dilemma under stakes, interrupting, correcting, apologising and re-ordering with the target chunks.

5. 5. Wrap-up: delayed correction and reflection

   5 min · Teacher to class

   Teacher: Put the anonymous error log on the board and let the class repair it together. Close with one self-evaluation sentence from each student.

   Students: Students correct the board errors as a group and name one thing they will do differently next time.

What usually goes wrong, and what to do

Students pronounce 'would' as strong /wʊd/ in connected speech, producing unnatural 'I /wʊd/ like'.

Model the weak form /wəd/ explicitly in the Presentation stage. Drill the contracted 'I'd' /aɪd/: students who use the contraction sidestep the problem entirely.

Students confuse 'would' (polite request) with 'will' (future), producing 'I will have the chicken'.

Drill the explicit contrast in Presentation: 'I will have' as a statement of fact against 'I would like' as a polite request.

Students drop softeners ('please', 'excuse me'), producing transactionally correct but pragmatically abrupt requests.

Teach 'please' and 'excuse me' as obligatory pair words in restaurant requests during Presentation, and add them to the board frames.

Students use 'appetizer' (US English) instead of 'starter' (UK English), or the reverse.

Acknowledge both in the cultural notes branch of the mind map and make the choice explicit rather than marking one wrong.

Students avoid tipping references out of anxiety about getting it wrong, and freeze at the end of the role-play.

Address tipping explicitly in the cultural notes: roughly 10-15% in the UK and US, often already included elsewhere in Europe.

In pair work one student monopolises the speaking turn and the other goes passive.

Enforce the role swap at the 5-minute mark with a loud signal, and re-pair a struggling learner with a stronger one if monitoring reveals chronic imbalance.

Differentiation

If they need more support

Provide L-shape sentence frames on cue cards ('I'd like ___, please' with the slot visually highlighted). Pair a weaker student with a stronger one for the case brief, with the stronger student taking the more demanding role (the waiter, who must improvise). Allow a 30-second rehearsal before performing.

If they finish early

Remove the sentence frames. Add a complication to the case brief: 'The waiter does not speak English well, so you must repeat using different words.' Require students to self-correct one of their own errors before performing for the class.

How you know it worked

• Produces 'I'd like' OR 'Could I have' in 4 or more ordering utterances across Controlled Practice and Production.
• Maintains polite intonation: rising pitch on requests, no abrupt falling stress on 'menu' or 'bill'.
• Recovers from at least one misunderstanding using 'Sorry, can you repeat?' or 'Excuse me, could you ___?'
• In the Allergic Diner scenario, responds with at least two of: alerting the waiter politely, reassuring the colleague without exposing him, proposing an alternative dish.
• Self-corrects at least one error in the wrap-up when it is shown on the board.

Homework

Write a 10-line dialogue for a restaurant scenario of your choice. You must use 'I'd like' and 'Could I have', and respond to at least one unexpected event: a dish is unavailable, the order is wrong, or someone has an allergy. Bring it to the next class and we will perform two of them.