LinkedIn lesson plan

I planned this LinkedIn lesson with my adult Business English students in mind. It combines speaking, listening and writing in the context of using LinkedIn, one of the fastest-growing social networking services for professionals. It is a great lesson to use with corporate clients, who often have an extensive and impressive knowledge of business networking and find this topic really interesting and engaging.

The Task

Start off with a conversation about LinkedIn to find out whether your students are familiar with this community / use it, and what they think about it. It is great to be able to show a sample LinkedIn profile (your own or your friend’s etc.) to have an authentic visual.

Move on the listening activity which discusses the dos and dont’s of creating LinkedIn profiles. Before you watch the video make sure your students are familiar with basic elements of a LI profile (last point in the Before you watch section).

After you watch section contains two tasks:

• speaking about the content of the video

Students might talk in pairs, groups or you can talk with the whole class. Try to point out expressions used in the questions (the come from the vid)

• spicing up LI headlines using ideas provided in the video

Here is a chance for your students to get creative and practice their writing skills. The task is quite short but activates a lot of vocabulary and encourages students to think creatively. Ask them to compare their ideas with each other. You might also vote for the best headline.

The optional follow-up, which I usually set for homework is for your students to write their own LinkedIn profiles (Summary and Experience sections).

If you are interested in other activities suitable for Business English classes check out this speaking activity where students practice using persuasive language.

Personal Experience

This activity worked really well with my adult students, who were mostly very familiar with LinkedIn and able to offer a bunch of practical advice, Dos and Dont’s and personal anecdotes. They appreciated the job-oriented content of the class and found it really useful in terms of improving their own profiles. The listening activity might be a challenge for some students (fast-paced speech, American accent) but since it’s pretty short you might even play it three times to make sure your students got it.

Materials

LinkedIn Lesson Plan (with key)