Lesson Topic: etiquette, manners
Skill Focus: Speaking, Reading, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 2 hours
Lesson Plan Download: etiquette-manners-upper-intermediate-122025.docx
Lesson Overview:
- Update: This lesson was significantly revised and expanded in December 2025.
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about manners and social rules in the student's culture.
- The reading passage covers ten scenarios related to paying a bill, public displays of affection, bad dates, tipping, unwanted gifts, sitting on the bus, being seen as ‘part of the team’, odors, white lies, and online privacy.
- Post-reading, students match B2/C1-level vocabulary to their definitions.
- Next, students use the vocabulary to rewrite discussion questions, which they ask to each other.
- After one debate prompt, students review a list of questionable behaviors and plot them on a scale of "extremely rude" to "totally acceptable".
- Students then review a list of 10 actions and rank them on a politeness scale, from extremely rude to totally acceptable.
- As a bonus, the lesson has a language focus on the phrase can't stop + gerund / can't stop + but + infinitive.
- For a roleplay, the students first list inappropriate behavior on airplanes. They then roleplay trying to convince a neighbouring passenger to stop doing some of these behaviors.
- Continuing with speaking activities, students next review a list of seven tips for social interaction, and discuss which ones they agree or disagree with.
- After two famous quotations, students review vocabulary, collocations, and then discuss some final discussion questions.
UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2/C1) Lesson on Etiquette & Manners
- Do people from your country have good manners compared to people of other nationalities?
- What customs or social rules does your country have that a foreigner might not know?
- What examples of bad manners do you often see?
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). 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.
Vocabulary: 1-a, 2-d, 3-c, 4-j, 5-g, 6-h, 7-l, 8-e, 9-b, 10-k, 11-f, 12-i
Collocations: 1-a, 2-f, 3-b, 4-c, 5-d, 6-e
[1] Some original content; some ideas taken from https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1d10p1w/what_are_some_unspoken_social_etiquette_rules/
This website is great!!! Full of useful vocabulary words..
thanks for help guys this is really useful
I think that this topic interesting. Because this topic has fun story
great job overall… nice visiting experience
Thank you for this lesson plan! It has great ideas!
I am not sure how to implement this as there’s no explanation to the set-up for the questions. Then the multiple choice refers to a news lesson but which one ?? Very confused.
Cavin: You can set up or segue into the topic however you’d like. Please disregard the word ‘news’ in the above section (I’ve removed it); typically the lessons here are based on the news, but this one was an original. Everything else should be fairly straightforward. If you need help on how to use our lessons, visit here: https://www.englishcurrent.com/teachers/english-current-lesson-plans/ . Please download the lesson in .doc format above for a better layout.
I love the topic. How about starting with a funny video on french words in english (the french brexit song) ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPLe9qhpBF8’ and students can watch and write the list of words that come from French. Etiquette is one of them so then the teacher can ask what is ‘etiquette’ and then go on and ask more warm-up questions. I’ll try it in my next lesson.
I think that this topic interesting. Because this topic has fun story