Giving advice is such a key area of functional language. It’s useful in real life and for developing speaking skills. This is one of my favourite activities to practise giving advice in a fun and communicative way at B1–B2 level. Your students choose a fictional everyday problem, ask questions to understand it and offer suggestions with reasons. I especially love this activity because it’s flexible and adaptable based on the level of your group.
Contents
Giving advice
There are a whole range of phrases that we use for giving advice. At lower levels, you may focus on using should / shouldn’t to give recommendations, but once your students are at a high B1 or B2 level, they need to expand their functional language to give advice in a variety of ways.
Giving useful advice starts with understanding the situation. Follow up this activity with some problem-solving and discussion prompts:
Here are some common expressions for giving advice:
- If I were you…
- Why don’t you…?
- Have you tried…?
- In my experience, … works really well.
- If I were in your shoes, I would / wouldn’t…
- Have you thought about…?
- In this kind of situation, I always recommend…
- One thing you could try is…
- Maybe you should / shouldn’t…
- It’s generally a good idea to…
- Another option would be to…
- The sooner you … , the better.
- It might help to…
- I’d suggest…
We take advantage of these expressions for this fun, communicative activity.
The materials
Set up an everyday advice clinic and give your students a chance to use the language of giving advice.
The first page contains 14 everyday problem cards. The second page provides useful language, a worked exchange and teacher instructions. Learners can invent details for their chosen card, so they do not need to share a personal problem.
Here are a few different ways to use the materials:
Activity 1 – A memory game
- Print and cut up the problem cards on page 1.
- Give 4–5 cards to each student or pair.
- Display the language on page 2 and let students suggest advice for each situation.
- Hide the language and try to remember useful phrases for the same cards.
Activity 2 – Chat cards
- Print and cut up the problem cards on page 1.
- Split the cards between a pair of students.
- One student explains a fictional problem; their partner asks a clarification question.
- Offer two suggestions with reasons, then choose which would work best.
Activity 3 – Advice clinic role-play
- Print and cut up the cards on page 1.
- Display the advice language from page 2.
- In pairs, choose who explains the problem and who gives advice.
- Choose a card and invent any extra details needed.
- Ask a clarification question, offer two suggestions with reasons and choose one.
- Switch roles and repeat.
- EXTENSION: Have students write a dialogue and act it out for the class.
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