Personal branding
Lesson plan overview
This Business English lesson is dedicated to the topic of personal branding, and offers practical tips about building your personal brand. Students will discuss topics like professional image and reputation, social media presence, and the importance of managing your personal brand. Other video-based lessons that you might find interesting are: “Brand differentiation”, “How to find your passion”, and “Cancel culture”.
Speaking: The lesson starts with 6 photos of well-known people (Steve jobs, Michelle Obama, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, and Richard Branson). Students choose 2 or 3 of them and discuss different questions about them. Then, they are asked to define what personal branding is. Next, students look at different statements about personal branding and decide which ones are true. After defining what personal branding is, students look at different expressions (e.g. professional reputation, career advancement, differentiation in a competitive job market, trust and credibility) and discuss how each one is related to personal branding and the importance of personal branding. Students then look at some statistics related to recruitment and personal branding, and answer a few questions given.
Listening: Students watch a TED talk called “5 steps to building a personal brand you feel good about”. The video is divided into 2 parts. Students complete 3 listening comprehension activities.
Vocabulary: Students work on vocabulary by matching the qualities to their opposites (e.g. integrity-dishonesty, adaptability-inflexibility, humility-arrogance).
Speaking: Students take a look at different questions that appear in the video, and interview each other. They are encouraged to use the words from the previous activity.
Reading and writing: Students learn how to write their own mission statement. First, they take a look at 6 mission statements and decide which person each statement belongs to (e.g. a real estate agent, a tech entrepreneur, etc.). Then students choose 3 of the professionals and discuss which social media platform would be best for them to reach their target audience and what kind of content might their target audience find useful. After that students take a look at a few useful phrases from the mission statements. Finally, students are asked to write their own mission statements after reading a few tips.
You can use the conversation cards for additional speaking practice.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
Pre-class activities
All video-based ESL lesson plans include online pre-class activities, which are FREE and can be completed without registration. Perfect for teachers who wish to embrace the blended learning approach. By providing students with resources and engagement opportunities before the actual class session, educators can foster active participation, enhance comprehension, and optimise in-class discussions.
The pre-class activities are optional: if you choose not to assign them, or your students don’t complete them, it will not disturb the flow of the class. You can find and review the pre-class activities for this lesson plan here:
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In-class activities
Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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