If I ran the company

Workplace & culture: Second conditional

Free

60-90 min

Standard

Intermediate

Overview

In this intermediate-level (B1) lesson, students will learn how to discuss corporate workplace policies and workplace culture. They will focus on using the second conditional structure to speculate on hypothetical executive decisions and evaluate how corporate perks influence productivity and employee well-being.

The lesson is built around a series of images depicting modern and unconventional workplace environments, such as sleep pods, pet-friendly offices, gaming areas, and outdoor meeting spaces. Students will describe these visual scenarios and evaluate their effectiveness before practicing conditional structures through guided transformation tasks and role plays. The lesson concludes with a discussion on controversial corporate statements and a reflective writing task for homework.

View Lesson Outline

Media & Worksheets

Lesson PDFs

e-lesson Version

Our standard lessons follow a consistent six-stage flow: warm-up, a presentation based on real content (video, text or images), a contextual language focus stage, controlled practice, a free practice session, and a final homework task.

Each lesson includes a printable student worksheet and teacher’s guide with answer keys. For digital classrooms, we provide an editable Google Slides e-lesson, that is also compatible with PowerPoint.

The purpose of this stage is to activate your students' existing knowledge and prepare them for the lesson's theme.

Activity 1: The students look at images and words associated with workplace health and executive decision-making.

During this part of the lesson, we will introduce the main content, presenting new language and concepts through video, text or images.

The presentation material for this lesson is a collection of images of workplace perks or design features.

Activity 2: Students work in pairs to describe each image in detail.

Activity 3: The students work in pairs to evaluate the workplace perks shown in the images and select the two most effective options.

Activity 4: The students will discuss several questions related to modern workplace trends to share their opinions on office perks and company culture.

This stage of of the lesson includes a contextual, interactive activity designed for presenting the target language.

Activity 5: The students will examine sentences based on the presentation images to identify the structure and function of the second conditional.

To reinforce their understanding of the new language or concepts introduced in the lesson, the students will work on a couple of controlled practice activities.

Activity 6: The students will rewrite real-world office scenarios into hypothetical second conditional statements.

Activity 7: The students combine prompt clauses using the second conditional to link hypothetical workplace changes with their effects on employee productivity and burnout.

Activity 8: The students match specific policies to workplace problems and discuss how each policy would solve the issue.

We move into free practice for this stage, where the students apply the language in more open-ended, communicative activities.

Activity 9: The students will discuss several conversation starters with a partner to share their opinions on management styles and modern workplace trends.

Activity 10: The students will discuss several controversial statements related to corporate perks and modern executive choices, deciding whether they agree, disagree or partially agree.

Finally, we'll encourage students to extend their learning outside of the classroom to reinforce the language and concepts covered during the lesson.

Homework task: The students will write a reflective essay describing how their ideal company culture and office environment would look if they were in an executive position.