Complaining Politely

A2 · Elementary57 minTravelLesson 7 of 8 · Outline

Aims

Goal: complain about food politely — a soft start, the problem in one clear sentence, and a clear request — so it actually gets fixed.

The lesson, stage by stage

  1. Warm up5 min

    Warm-up: Something's wrong with my food

    2 warm-up questions

  1. Reading10 min

    Reading: A Problem With the Food

    Read a 160-word text about A Problem With the Food

  2. Vocabulary8 min

    Vocabulary: Complaint Words

    7 items

  3. Practice7 min

    Practice: Making Complaints

    Gap-fill exercise, 5 items

  4. Practice7 min

    Practice: Fix the Complaints

    Error-correction exercise, 5 items

  5. Dialogue10 min

    Dialogue: Make a Polite Complaint

    Role-play: Your food order has a problem. Complain politely to the waiter. (7 lines)

  6. Discussion10 min

    Discussion: Your mission: send it back nicely

    3 discussion questions

Open the full lesson

The remaining 6 stages of this lesson, with the procedure, the examples and the exercises, are included with Starter, along with the interactive version you can teach from. Lesson 1 of this course is free: the full plan is on this site, and a free account opens it in the interactive player.

Target vocabulary

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

complaintcoldundercookedwrong orderexcuse memanagerrefund

This plan comes from the Restaurants & Food course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.