Personality ESL Worksheets, Lessons and Plans
23 worksheets, 21 lessons, 7 vocabulary decks and 3 shadowing scripts · People & me
Start here — 6 free samples
Free to try: open, print and play them — no account needed.
Personality worksheets
23 printable worksheets with answer keys.
Personality lessons
21 ready lessons for the four skills: teach on the board, set online or print.
Personality vocabulary
7 word decks with meanings, examples and pronunciation: flip, quiz, print as flashcards or play as a game.
Personality shadowing
Listen, repeat, record and compare: short scripts for pronunciation and fluency.
About Personality
Personality vocabulary lets learners talk about the people who matter to them, give opinions and describe themselves in interviews and applications. It is also a topic with plenty of room for discussion, from star signs to what makes a good leader.
At A1 and A2 learners start with friendly, funny, kind, shy, lazy and clever, using be and simple opposites. B1 adds reliable, generous, confident and negative prefixes such as un-, in- and dis-, together with giving examples to support an opinion. At B2 to C2 learners handle nuanced and connotation-rich words (stubborn versus determined, thrifty versus mean), idioms such as a cold fish or down to earth, and personality tests and theories.
This page collects printable worksheets, ready-to-teach lessons and flashcard decks on personality for A1 to C2.
Teaching tips: Personality
- Have learners sort adjectives into positive, negative and "it depends" columns, then argue their choices in pairs.
- Teach prefix opposites as a set (patient/impatient, honest/dishonest, reliable/unreliable) and ask students to find the rule-breakers.
- Ask students to back up every adjective with an example ("She's generous: she always pays for coffee") to move beyond one-word answers.
- Point out false friends such as sensible and sympathetic, which many learners confuse with words in their own language.
Questions teachers ask
Which personality adjectives are right for A2 learners?
Common, high-frequency words such as friendly, kind, funny, shy, lazy, hard-working, clever and polite, along with their opposites. More nuanced words like assertive or arrogant fit B1 and above.
How do I teach connotation at higher levels?
Give pairs of words with similar meaning but different feeling, such as slim and skinny or confident and arrogant, and ask learners to rank them from most to least positive.
Can personality lessons work with teenagers?
Yes. Quizzes, personality tests and describing characters from series or games tend to work well and avoid putting individual students on the spot.