While English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners come to class with varying goals and needs, most are looking for better employment opportunities.

As an ESOL instructor, you may wonder, “How can I support learners with their employment goals without sacrificing their language needs?” The good news is that they work together. You can support learners by helping them develop the transferable workforce skills called "employability skills," such as oral and written communication, collaboration and teamwork, and problem-solving. No sacrifice is necessary. These are essential skills for success in the workforce. Each time learners ask questions, clarify meaning, work with others, or explain an idea, they are developing skills and language they can use in the workplace. 

What does this look like in the ESOL classroom?

The Inspiring Career Development and Action (ICA) curriculum can guide you in integrating career development into everyday language instruction. For example, in the ICA lesson “Learning About Your Classmates,” (Lesson One, page 17), learners share information about past or current jobs and ask questions to learn about one another’s experiences. With support, ESOL learners can build language skills for effective communication through:

• Question formation, using “Wh-” questions and the simple present tense, such as “What do you do?” or “Who do you work with?”
• Vocabulary for specific jobs and tasks
• Pronunciation practice with key words such as job titles and multisyllabic words like “assistant” and “manager”
• Clarifying language, such as “Can you repeat that?” or “What do you mean?”

These supports help learners manage conversations and build fluency.

Employability Skills Are Not Limited to the Topic of Work

Collaboration and teamwork skills transfer easily to the workplace, and you can help students build these skills through everyday topics. For example, in a unit on health, ask learners to work in pairs to plan a healthy daily routine. Suggest collaborative language structures such as:

• Modal verbs for suggestions, such as “should” and “can”
• Sentence frames such as “Let’s . . .,” “We can . . .,” and “What do you think?”
• Vocabulary related to routines and health, such as “exercise,” “meals,” and “sleep”
• Pronunciation practice focused on sentence stress and intonation in suggestions and responses

This language helps learners sound more natural and stay engaged in group interactions.

You can also integrate problem-solving into common classroom themes. For example, in a housing or community unit, ask learners to read a short scenario about a problem, such as a broken appliance. Then have them work in small groups to decide what to do and explain their reasoning. This builds problem-solving language through:

• Sequencing and cause-and-effect structures such as “First . . ., then . . .,” “because,” and “so”
• Functional vocabulary such as “repair,” “call,” and “landlord”
• Pronunciation practice focused on connected speech in longer phrases

These supports help learners explain ideas clearly and organize their thinking.

Where the Skills Show Up

Across these meaningful classroom contexts, your learners are building skills for:

• Communication: asking questions, clarifying meaning, and sharing information
• Collaboration and teamwork: working with others toward a shared goal
• Problem-solving: analyzing situations, making decisions, and explaining reasoning

Try This in Your Classroom Tomorrow

You don’t need a new unit to build these skills. Start by making small, intentional adjustments to your existing lessons:

• Add one workplace-focused question: “How would you say this at work?”
• Turn a pair activity into a structured interview: “What is your favorite season? Why? What do you do during that season?”
• Add simple sentence frames: “Can you repeat that?” or “I think . . . because . . .”
• Include one reflection question: “What skill did you use today?”

These small changes can make everyday lessons more purposeful.

Moving Forward

Integrating workforce readiness into your lessons does not have to feel like something extra. In ESOL classrooms, employability skills are part of everyday interaction.

By being intentional about these moments, including modeling language, providing supports, and creating opportunities for interaction, you can help learners use English not only to communicate, but also to increase their employability.

In the end, this work is not about adding more content. It is about recognizing the language learners are already using and helping them apply it to the goals that brought them to the classroom.