Company structures

This business ESL lesson focuses on company structures and internal departments, helping learners build essential vocabulary, improve communication skills, and develop a clearer understanding of workplace organization. Suitable for intermediate learners, the lesson offers a balance of listening, vocabulary, and speaking tasks that promote real-world business communication.

Speaking: The lesson starts with a discussion on which roles are essential and how organizational structure varies across businesses.

Vocabulary: Students match departments such as Marketing, Finance, and Operations to their responsibilities, reinforcing terminology relevant to workplace roles. Then, students discuss a few conversation questions.

Pre-listening vocabulary: Students learn and practice expressions like frontline staff, department head, cross-training, to overlap

Listening: Through a video called “Organizational structure“, learners identify key characteristics of hierarchical, team-based, and matrix models, followed by true/false comprehension questions and structure matching. After that, they discuss which organizational model they prefer and justify their choices, promoting critical thinking and personal connection to the topic.

Reading: A detailed company structure is explored through a descriptive text and a supporting organizational chart. Learners analyze leadership roles and reporting lines.

Vocabulary – Prepositions: Key expressions such as “to be responsible for” and “to report to” are practiced to describe job functions and hierarchies. Sentence frames guide students in describing company roles and structures, culminating in the task of drawing and explaining their own organizational chart.

For more speaking practice, you can use the printable conversation cards.