Lesson Topics: breaking bad habits, good habits
Skill Focus: Reading, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 2 hours
Lesson Plan Download: bad-habits-lesson-advanced-032025.docx
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about habits and breaking bad habits.
- The reading passage is short at only 235 words. It presents five points describing bad habits, including procrastination, distractions, saying yes too often, insecurity, and mental noise. The ideas in the lesson are general and should be relatable to both teenage and adult students.
- The passage is followed by comprehension and follow-up questions.
- Next, students review the 11 vocabulary items by matching them to their corresponding definitions.
- After vocabulary matching, students form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- The lesson's role-play scenario first has students select bad habits that apply to them from a list. Next, they take turns acting as a counselor in order to help their partner break their habit.
- Next, the lesson shifts towards good habits. In groups, students give a short presentation on five good habits to have to succeed in certain areas of life.
- The lesson then presents five famous quotations related to habits for discussion.
- Finally, the lesson ends with a review of vocabulary and collocations before presenting some final discussion questions.
ADVANCED (C1/C2) Bad Habits ESL Lesson Plan
Warm-Up Questions
- What are some things that you like to do every day?
- What are some things that you should do every day that you don’t always?
- What’s the best way to break a bad habit?
- Predicting: You are about to read an article about bad habits. With a partner, try to guess what bad habits will be listed in the article.
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). It was updated in March, 2025. Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.
Comprehension Question Answer Key
- …
- Possible ideas: 1- excuses, 2-distractions, 3-refusals, 4-insecurity, 5-mental noise
- The cycle refers to a cycle of procrastination and excuses that prevent us from completing our task/goal.
- Here the author refers to the falsity of people’s public or social media profiles that do not really show who they truly are.
- …
- …
Vocabulary: 1-c, 2-d, 3-g, 4-k, 5-f, 6-h, 7-a, 8-i, 9-j, 10-e, 11-b
Collocations 1-e, 2-a, 3-b, 4-c, 5-d
[i] https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/brain-trust/201202/is-your-brain-multitasking
In the first warm-up question, there is an error. It should be “you like to do,” not “you do like to do”.
Thanks!