Ready-to-teach English lessons
Big ideas. Simple English. Real conversations.
Contemporary lessons for teachers working with adults and older teens, with meaningful input, useful language and a reason to speak.
- B1–C1
- 10–90 minutes
- Teacher + student files
Start with what you need
What does today’s lesson need?
The Big Talk method
Not more questions. A conversation that goes somewhere.
Interesting content
A lesson starts from a question people want to argue about, rather than a category out of a coursebook.
Useful language
A small set of expressions chosen for this one conversation. They return in the examples, the practice and the final task.
Meaningful communication
The lesson ends with a task: something to rank, a side to take, a position to defend or someone to talk round.
Inside the club
What are we talking about?
How a Big Talk works
One lesson, from the first question to the final task
This is Nostalgia Sells, a 65-minute lesson for B1+–B2. Every Big Talk moves the same way: an idea first, then the language, then a reason to use it.
- Spot the comeback trend
- Work out remake vs reboot
- Learn nine industry expressions
- Read why nostalgia sells
- Take a side
- Pitch a revival
Language that comes back
- Meet it
- Notice it
- Practise it
- Use it
- Hear it again
Three of the expressions in this lesson
- sequela film or book that continues a story that has already been told
- prequela film or book set before the events of the original story
- remakea new version of a film that already exists, telling the same story again
You can see every target expression on the lesson page before you buy.
B1 and B1+
Interesting conversations don’t require advanced English.
A lot of B1 material plays it safe and stops at hobbies, holidays and daily routines. Adult students have opinions about work and about what they read in the news, and they can share them with the English they already have. Our B1 and B1+ lessons keep the ideas grown-up and the language within reach.
What we hold to
Four things every lesson does
A topic with real tension
Every lesson opens with a question people disagree about, so there is something to say from the first minute.
Input before output
Students read or listen first. They get ideas and language before anyone asks for their opinion.
Language that comes back
A new expression returns in the examples, the practice and the final task instead of vanishing after its first outing.
Speaking with a purpose
Instead of ten discussion questions, students get a task: a ranking, a choice, a position to defend or someone to talk round.
New in the club
Worth a look
From the blog
· Teaching ideas
How to run an English conversation class that isn't just chatting
· Teaching ideas
ESL speaking activities that don't end in awkward silence
· Teaching ideas
Teaching English to adults: what changes when the student is forty
Talking Point, the newsletter
Interesting things worth reading, watching and talking about.
A letter from one English teacher to others. An article or a podcast worth your time, an idea for using it in class, a short note on teaching, and now and then a new lesson. It arrives when there is something worth sending.
Behind the lessons
A small publishing house for English teachers
Big Talk Club is written and edited by an English teacher who got tired of choosing between sound teaching and a file worth looking at. The shop matters, and so does everything around it: the blog, the newsletter and ideas you can use without buying anything.
