Stress

This is an advanced level worksheet about stress and some ways to deal with it. The worksheet contains speaking, listening, and reading elements.

First students will warm up with some basic questions about stress, and then do a speaking exercise in which they must go through a list of stressful events and rate them on a scale of 1-10 with a partner.

After this students will read an article about 3 common stressful situations for working adults, and some suggestions on how to manage these situations. This article contains lots of useful underlined vocabulary that will be repeated throughout the worksheet such as “worn out”, “unwind”, and “relief.” Students will answer questions about the article but also match the underlined vocabulary to it’s meaning. 

After this the class will listen to a discussion between a stressed accountant and his friend. The accountant mentions several sources of stress in his life (he is very busy at work, he had an argument with his wife, and his son has started playing the drums), and his friend gives him advice. A lot of the vocabulary from the article is used in this audio. Students will answer questions about the audio.

Next students will read an email from a boss who believes his company is too worn out, and needs a holiday/team-building weekend. Students must read the email and then read about and discuss 6 possible activities to do on the holiday weekend (spa day, paintball etc.). Then the students will decide together what 3 they want to present to their boss as good activities to help the workforce unwind.

This worksheet will work well with any upper-intermediate class, but is particularly geared towards business English students with high stress jobs. The worksheet contains plenty of useful vocabulary and plenty of opportunities for students to practice using it.

The transcript for the audio can be found at the end of the Teacher’s Version (TV) worksheet.