How to teach offers

Making and responding to offers is one of the most common communicative situations in English, but offers often gets less class time than commands like “Sit down”, even though the imperative is much more common in offers like “Please go ahead” in normal communication. This article gives tips on how to present the language of offering and replying to offers, and another article has ideas on offers games and other practice activities.

What students need to know about offers

The two most common patterns of offers are:

• questions (“Can I help you?”, “Would you like a cup of tea?”, “Shall I carry that for you?”, “Can I give you a hand with…?”, etc)
• imperative forms (“Make yourself at home”, “Please help yourself”, “If you need anything else, just let me know”, etc)

There are also offers which are grammatical statements like “I’ll… for you, if you like”, “If you like, I can… for you” and “I’d like to offer…” (Here is a list of phrases for making offers at all levels from Elementary to Advanced.)

Most students could benefit from learning at least three or four of those typical sentence stems for making offers. Which phrases are most suitable to present depends on their level, what they already know, and what situations they are likely to hear offers and/ or make offers in. The last of those will affect what different levels of formality they will need, something they will also need to know the differences between. For example, “Do you want…?” is much more casual than the standard “Would you like…?”, while “May I help you with…?” is much more formal.

The next thing students need to learn is the trickier point of responding to offers. Typical positive responses include (in approximate order of what level I would present them):

• Yes, please.
• That would be lovely, thanks.
• Thanks, that’s a great help.
• You (really) are too kind.
• If it’s not too much trouble.
• If you could.
• If you wouldn’t mind.
• I’ll do the same for you sometime.
• Would you? Really? How can I ever repay you?
• Thanks. I owe you one.
• You’re a star.
• You’re a lifesaver.
• I’m so glad you asked me that.
• I am eternally in your debt.

Typical negative responses include:

• That’s okay, thanks. I think I can manage.
• Thanks for the offer, but I just had one.
• That’s really kind of you, but…
• No, thank you. I…
• I think I can cope, but I’ll let you know if I need any help.
• It’s very tempting, but…
• I would, but…
• I’d usually say yes, but…
• I really shouldn’t. (I’m on a diet).
• I’m afraid I’m not really into…
• I think I’ll pass this time. I…
• Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to…
• Please don’t put yourself out.
• I really couldn’t impose on you any more.
• Really, don’t think that you have to… on my account.

Students should be able to see the common pattern in most of those phrases of saying something nice about the offer/ in response to the offer, rejecting it, and giving a reason.

At higher levels, you might also want to teach responses to responses, such as:

• If I can’t tempt you with…, how about…?
• Let me know if you change your mind.
• In that case, let me know if you need…

Typical student problems with offers

Students often get confused with formality/ politeness in offers, for example saying “Do you want…?” where “Would you like…?” would be more suitable. However, because offering is helping someone else, mistakes are less serious than they would be with other functions like requests. Students need to be more careful with responses, as for example “Sure, why not?” is not suitable for “Can I help you with your buggy?” As with this example, a common problem is students being insufficiently enthusiastic with the positive parts of their responses, for example saying “That sounds okay” where “That would be lovely” would be more suitable.

Another issue with responses is with “Yes, please” and “No, thank you”. Just “Thank you” means “Yes”, but may make the listener think that they missed part of a longer rejecting phrase, so can be confusing even between native speakers. “Please” on its own always means “Yes”, but has a stronger almost begging feeling that most students don’t intend.

Students rarely have problems using the imperative for offers (although they often have the opposite problem of using it for requests and so making them seem like orders). However, they may mix up similar forms which are not distinguished in their language. For example, in Japanese these different English offers would usually be the same single identical word:

• Please go ahead.
• Please help yourself.
• After you.
• This way please.
• Please take a seat.
• Here you are.

How to present making and responding to offers

As long as the situation is clear, it should be easy for students to work out that “Would you like anything to drink?” is an offer and “Thanks but it’s Ramadan, so I can’t drink until later” is a polite negative response. Like this example, the most obvious situation is one with a host and guest, for example before a meeting starts or arriving at a host family. Initial tasks could include brainstorming what you might offer in that situation and listening to check what is offered, then listening again for which things are rejected. Students could then analyse the transcript for the language for making, accepting and rejecting offers, and patterns in them.

After or instead of that, students could also listen to successful and unsuccessful interactions involving offers, with the latter including too casual language, short negative responses, not giving up on offering, etc.

How to practise making and responding to offers

There is another article on this site with stimulating offers practice activities, including making and responding to offers games.