How to Improve Your Relationships

Lesson Summary:
This ESL video lesson plan is built around a short video titled Five Ways to Improve Your Relationships and explores relationships, human connection and self-awareness. Designed for Advanced (C1) to Proficient (C2) learners, it offers a complete, ready-to-use package that develops learners’ language skills through viewing and discussion, critical thinking, roleplay and extended reading. Learners engage with authentic ideas about communication, conflict and emotional awareness while expanding high-level vocabulary and practising speaking and writing skills.

Learning Objectives:
• To introduce students to the themes of relationships, human connection and self-awareness.
• To expand students’ vocabulary related to relationships and emotional awareness.
• To develop students’ viewing, listening and reading comprehension skills.
• To improve students’ speaking skills through discussion and roleplay using new vocabulary.
• To develop students’ writing skills through creative and reflective tasks.
• To improve students’ visual representing skills through multimodal tasks.

Lesson Activities:
• Activating background knowledge about relationships and human connection.
• Predicting video content and discussing relationship quotations.
• Viewing a short video and completing comprehension tasks.
• Analysing ideas about conflict, change and self-awareness.
• Roleplay focusing on relationship communication and boundaries.
• Reading and responding to an extended article on avoiding conflict.
• Reflective writing and critical discussion tasks.

Learner Type:
Advanced (C1) – Proficient (C2) mature teens and adults.

Language Focus:
• Relationship vocabulary
• Emotional awareness and self-reflection
• Conflict, communication and connection

Transform Your English Classroom with This Film English Multimodal Lesson

This ESL video lesson plan is built around a carefully selected short video and designed using the exclusive Multimodal Approach– an innovative methodology that integrates traditional language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) with viewing – the active process of analysing and interpreting multimodal texts – and representing – creating multimodal texts. This pedagogically rich approach mirrors how communication works in the real world, through a combination of language, image, sound, gesture and spatial design, making the lesson more engaging, relevant and effective.

This ESL video lesson plan plan consists of a complete, ready-to-use package that includes:

• A thought-provoking short video
• A detailed teacher’s guide with step-by-step instructions
• A pre-viewing vocabulary glossary to scaffold understanding
• Comprehension, discussion and critical thinking questions
• Creative post-viewing tasks such as roleplays, writing prompts and reflective activities
• A thematically linked reading text to reinforce language and deepen understanding
• A final task encouraging learners to create their own multimodal compositions (e.g. vlogs, posters, infographics or social media posts)

Benefits for Teachers:

• Save hours of preparation with a fully developed, flexible lesson plan
• Engage students through compelling stories and real-world themes such as emotional intelligence, character, values, empathy, personal development, identity, relationships, global issues and social issues
• Build classroom routines that integrate multimodal literacy naturally and progressively
• Foster more inclusive and differentiated learning by using varied modes of input
• Promote social-emotional learning (SEL)
• Rely on a trusted methodology backed by educational research and grounded in the theories of Vygotsky, Kress, Mayer and Krashen

Benefits for Learners:

• Develop communicative competence and confidence through integrated skill-building
• Expand vocabulary and improve listening and reading comprehension through repeated, meaningful exposure
• Think critically and creatively while exploring powerful social and emotional themes
• Create authentic, personalised multimodal projects that reflect their own voice and ideas
• Strengthen emotional intelligence and intercultural awareness through affective engagement with multimodal texts

Whether you’re teaching in a secondary school, university or adult education context, Film English lesson plans offer a dynamic, research-informed pathway to meaningful language learning. Join thousands of teachers worldwide who are transforming their classrooms with the Multimodal Approach and helping their students learn English—and live through English—more fully.

Watch the short video.