How to practise offers and requests

13 fun activities combining requests and offers like “Can you… for me?” and “Can I help you?”

Although offers and requests are often usefully taught on their own, most communicative practice of one is sure to bring up the other, and there are also similarities and differences between them that are well worth contrasting. This article therefore gives thirteen fun practice activities that combine offering and requesting.

Requests and offers roleplays

Situations which should naturally have a lot of both offers and requests include:

• customers and staff (restaurants, planes, hotels, shops, hairdressers, etc)
• hosts and guests (visitors to offices, homestays, etc)
• at work (colleagues helping with a project, moving office, etc)
• people who live together (doing chores, redecorating, arranging a house party, etc)

These roleplays can be made more challenging and interesting with cards saying things like “Turn down the first three”, “Offer many different options” and “Ask for more information before you respond”.

Requests and offers dice games

A dice can decide:

• which of six situations like those above to roleplay
• which of six problems like those mentioned above to include in the roleplay
• the level of formality (1= super formal, etc)
• how long the interaction will be (1 = 1 minute, 2 = 90 seconds, etc)

Requests and offers guessing games

Students listen to sentences like “Please help yourself to ketchup and mustard” and “Can I have that with extra onion?” and guess who is speaking, where the speakers are, the relationship between the two people, etc.

Not that, but this

Students try to think of good reasons for saying no to requests (including ones which are difficult to turn down like “Can I borrow your dictionary?”) and then offer something different that the other person will hopefully say “Yes” to instead (“Would you like to use my smartphone dictionary app instead?”)

This could also work the other way around with students say no to offers and then requesting something different.

Requests and offers coin games

A coin can decide:

• who will be who in the next roleplay
• if the next thing will be a request or an offer
• if the next response will be positive or negative
• if the negative response will be followed by someone trying again or not
• if the dialogue will be formal or informal
• if the dialogue will be with someone they know or someone they don’t know
• if the dialogue will be at work or elsewhere

Requests and offers key words card game

Give students cards or a worksheet with typical words for making and responding to offers and requests like “grateful” and “but”. They get one point for each one they can use correctly in a roleplay conversation, with each being discarded or crossed off as they use them.

Requests and offers longer phrases card games

This is a good way of presenting and practising more complex phrases for requests and offers along with the similarities and differences between them. Collect about 15 useful phrases that can be made longer with words in the middle like “I’ll carry that (for you) if you like” and “Can you help me (at all) with this machine?”, and perhaps responding phrases like “Thanks for the (kind) offer, but I already…” Cut each phrase into three cards. Give out just the starting and ending parts for students to make basic phrases, then give out the middle parts for them to check and extend their answers.

After checking their matches, they can deal out the cards and try to use phrases including those words during roleplays.

Requests and offers vocabulary review

Students pick words which you are revising or want to present and try to make suitable requests or offers related to them, with their partner responding each time.

Requests and offers answer me

Students choose responding phrases like “Thanks, that’d be a great help” and “I’m afraid we’re out of stock” and try to make an offer or request which gets that response.

Requests and offers board games

Make a board game with squares that involve offers and requests like “Check into your flight” and “Your meal arrives”. Like these examples, this works best if the whole board makes a process like a journey, a work project or setting up a business.

To make students think carefully about their speaking, students move depending on criteria like:

• how many suitable requests and offers they make in that situation (e.g. move one square for each up to six squares)
• how many positive responses they get (ditto)
• how long the dialogue was (e.g. one square per 30 seconds)
• things their partner ticks on a checklist like “Right level of formality”, “A range of different phrases”, “Responded correctly” and “Smooth starting and ending”.

Original requests and offers

Groups of students all roleplay a situation such as trying to get team members to help. They then share offers and requests they made which they think are suitable and other groups didn’t think of, and get one point for each phrase that matches those two criteria.

This also works with groups just brainstorming those kinds of requests and offers.

Requests and offers competitions

In groups of three or four, one student makes the same request to all the other students, the other students politely reject their request and offer an alternative, then the original student decides which alternative offer is best.

Offers and requests predicted popularity

Students try to write requests and offers that will be accepted by every possible number of people in the class, e.g. one request or offer which will be accepted by every number between one person and ten people if there are ten in the class. Each group then says their sentences for the whole class to respond to, stopping whenever they get positive responses from the same number of people twice, e.g. five people say yes to one of their offers and later five people say yes to one of their requests. The group with the longest stretch of positive responses from different numbers of people wins.