How to plan a 60-minute ESL lesson adults will speak in

A full-time teacher does not need another 12-page plan. You need a shape you can trust on a Tuesday night when the copier is broken and two students are late. This is the shape I use for adult classes, and it is the shape behind the decks in the ESL lesson library.

Start from the sentence they will say

Write one sentence a student should be able to say by minute 55. Not a grammar label. A sentence.

“I’d go if it were cheaper.” “I’ll do it tomorrow is how I miss deadlines.” “Have you ever quit a job on the spot?”

If you cannot hear a student saying it to another student, the aim is still a textbook heading. Change it until it sounds like speech. The A2–B1 lessons and the B2–C1 lessons are built that way: the title is the conversation, and the grammar is named only after that.

Give the hour four rooms, not twelve stages

Minute 0–8 is a lead-in that uses language they already have. Ask a question they can answer from life. “What did you almost buy and then put back?” beats “Today we will study the present perfect.”

Minute 8–18 is the narrow focus. Show six to eight examples, not a lecture. Mark the pattern on the board in one colour. Adults can handle a rule if it fits on a sticky note. They cannot handle twelve exceptions before they have spoken.

Minute 18–48 is the work. Two tasks is enough. First a controlled one, where the new language is hard to avoid. Then a freer one, where they talk about their week and you listen for the new language instead of banning every other tense.

Minute 48–60 is feedback and a tiny repeat. Write three good sentences you heard, exactly, and one upgrade. Set a 90-second retell with a partner. Stop while they still have energy. Adult classes die in the last ten minutes when the teacher adds “just one more worksheet.”

Plan the pairs before you plan the slides

Decide who talks to whom. A class of eight needs a plan for the quiet accountant who will happily let the lawyer talk for an hour. Number them. Change partners once, not five times. Write the instruction in words you can say once: “Two minutes. A asks, B answers, then swap. I will time you.”

If you want a done-for-you version of this shape, open Any Weekend Plans? for A2–B1 plans and hesitation, or The Feedback Formula when the class is B2–C1 and works in offices.

What to leave out

Leave out the biography of the tense. Leave out a second grammar point “while we are here.” Leave out a video longer than the speaking task. If the slide deck is doing your job, you should be able to hide half the slides and the class should still talk. A 20 to 28 slide deck sounds long until you notice that most slides are prompts, not paragraphs.

Write the aim, the pairs, and the exit sentence at the top of your plan. Everything else is optional. The students came to speak English, not to watch you manage a document.