Taking & Leaving Messages

B1 · Intermediate1 hr 17 minBusiness EnglishLesson 2 of 8 · Outline

Aims

Goal: leave a 30-second voicemail that gets a callback, and take a message your colleague can act on — model voicemails, then live practice.

The lesson, stage by stage

  1. Warm up5 min

    Warm-up: Let's Chat About Phone Messages

    2 warm-up questions

  1. Reading10 min

    Reading: What happens to your message

    Read a 139-word text about What happens to your message

  2. Vocabulary8 min

    Vocabulary: Messaging Vocabulary

    7 items

  3. Reading10 min

    Reading: Professional Phone Messages

    Read a 200-word text about Professional Phone Messages

  4. Reading10 min

    Reading: Three model voicemails

    Read a 211-word text about Three model voicemails

  5. Practice7 min

    Practice: Message-Taking Phrases

    Gap-fill exercise, 6 items

  6. Practice7 min

    Practice: Build Message Sentences

    Word-ordering exercise, 5 items

  7. Dialogue10 min

    Dialogue: Taking and Leaving Messages

    Role-play: You answer the phone at your company. The caller wants to speak to your colleague who is unavailable. (9 lines)

  8. Discussion10 min

    Discussion: Your mission: message that survives

    3 discussion questions

Open the full lesson

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Target vocabulary

In a Tuton account these words become your student's vocabulary deck, so they come back in practice between lessons.

voicemailcallbackextensionholdtransferrelayon behalf of

This plan comes from the Phone & Video Calls course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.