With Valentine’s Day coming soon, it may be a good moment to bring the topic of romance to your classroom. You can approach this subject in many ways, one of them being office relationships – something that all adult learners have experienced and may have some stories to share.
Love can be found in unexpected places, including workplaces all over the world. It’s common for many people to form romantic relationships with their colleagues. However, this raises an important question: is it appropriate to get involved in an office romance? In this C1 lesson plan, we will analyze office statistics presented by Forbes Advisor – Workplace Romance Statistics, while giving students the opportunity to share their personal stories and opinions on the matter.
You can download the presentation, worksheet, and teacher’s notes at the end of the post for free!
The main focus of the class is on speaking, with a few elements of reading authentic material. To begin the class, you can initiate a discussion among the students by asking them to vote on whether office relationships are a good or a bad idea. If the class is divided in their opinions, you can pair the students who voted for and against and have them explain their points to each other. It is likely that not many people will vote in favour of office relationships, so you can then have a group discussion where the students list their reasons explaining why finding love at work is not a good idea.
Focus on a few specific vocabulary items. Re-read the text and match the underlined words to their definitions. These words are romance, heightened, comfortability, perception, favouritism, and nightmare. While doing this exercise, it may be interesting to discuss the difference between the words comfort and comfortability. Though both are nouns, it can be confusing when to use one over the other. I myself am struggling with this and cannot find any clear explanations on the internet. So, I urge you to help me find an answer to this question.
What’s the difference between comfortability and comfort?
Use the previously learned vocabulary to ask questions such as, how can favouritism towards a romantic partner in the office impact team morale and productivity, and why do people engage in an office romance? This discussion will lead us to the next part of the class, where we will explore the reasons why many people tend to find love at work. Students should quickly read the paragraph and find the answers to why people engage in office romance, which include comfort, lack of time, shared experience, and making work more enjoyable. Once the task is completed, students should fill in the missing words with the correct form of the base words.
In the next part of the class, have a group discussion about the effects of workplace relationships on careers. The goal is for students to come up with four impacts. Afterwards, collect some ideas and write them on the whiteboard. Focus on the most popular answers and write them around the questions. This task is designed to imitate CAE Speaking Part 3. Then, students work in pairs and answer another question: which of the impacts is the most detrimental? Explain the meaning of the word detrimental (= harmful). Elicit ideas from each pair and provide everyone with short speaking feedback.
Examine four effects of romantic relationships in the workplace as outlined in the Forbes article and compare them with your own responses. Discuss any differences between the responses of students and those of the participants. Afterwards, give some time to read four brief passages and match the headings to the extracts. Finally, discuss whether students agree or disagree with any of the points made in the text.
Finish the class by discussing the percentage of people (62%) who report their office relationships to HR. Ask the students to share their opinions on whether office relationships should be reported or not, and encourage a discussion on the reasons behind telling or keeping an office romance a secret. Divide the students into pairs and ask them to answer three more questions related to office relationships. End the class by eliciting some answers from the pairs and providing speaking feedback to the students.
If you enjoyed this Valentine’s Day lesson plan, you can download the presentation and worksheet by clicking the links below.
Do you know anyone who found love at the workplace? How did this relationship end?
