Feedback that helps: reporting verbs for giving useful feedback
About this lesson
Learners practice reporting verbs such as suggest, admit and encourage in this B2 English for IT lesson plan on feedback at work.
- Grammar
- Patterns after reporting verbs: -ing after suggest and admit, a person + to after encourage and warn, to after offer, and that after explain: She suggested splitting the ticket.
- Topic
- Feedback after a sprint demo, given in the SBI model (Situation, Behavior, Impact), with words such as observable, judgment, blind spot and act on.
- Activities
- A true story about the SBI model, a designer's messages to a tech lead, their practice call, self-checking drills, a feedback chat, open boxes of SBI tasks, and feedback to write and record.
What's inside
Chapter 1Warm-up: Great Job?!
Chapter 2The Story: Situation, Behavior, Impact
Chapter 3At Work: Take Two
Chapter 4Listen: Feedback on the Feedback
Chapter 5Grammar: Who Suggested What?
- Study the scheme: reporting verbsGrammar schemeTry it
- Sort the verbs into the correct columnsSort into columnsUnlock
- Choose the correct report of what each person saidQuizUnlock
- Fill in the gaps: report what they said with the verb in bracketsFill in the gapsTry it
- Is the sentence correct? True or falseTrue or falseUnlock
- Choose the correct option: Amara's notes from her one-on-oneChoose the optionUnlock
Chapter 6Speak Up: Feedback Goes Both Ways
Chapter 7Homework: Feedback They Can Use
- Read your phrase bankReal-life documentUnlock
- Choose the correct option: Iryna's message to KenjiChoose the optionUnlock
- Match the sentence halvesMatchUnlock
- Write SBI feedback for a colleague and report the replyWriting, checked by the teacherUnlock
- Record your spoken SBI feedbackSpeaking, checked by the teacherUnlock
Vocabulary
12 words and phrases from the lesson, each with a picture and audio in edio.
+9 more with pictures and audio in the lessonMore words
- a judgment
- intent
- a blind spot
- a growth area
- a pat on the back
- encourage
- admit
- point out
- act on
Grammar: reporting verbs and their patterns
He said I should practice is correct, but reported speech gets sharper when the verb says what the speaker did: he suggested it, she admitted it, he offered. Reporting a feedback call, learners choose the verb, then the pattern it needs: -ing, to, a person + to, or that.
Reporting verbs: what people said in a feedback talk
Choose a verb that says what the speaker did (suggested, admitted, offered…), then use its pattern: -ing, to, person + to, or that.
Four patterns after reporting verbs
Suggest, recommend, admit and deny take -ing: She admitted going too fast. Encourage, advise, remind and warn take a person + to. Offer, agree and refuse take to alone, and apologize takes for + -ing: Amara apologized for raising it.
| Pattern | Verbs | Example |
|---|---|---|
| verb + -ing | suggest, recommend, admit, deny | Kenji suggested practicing it out loud. |
| verb + that + clause | suggest, recommend, admit, deny, explain, point out, agree | Kenji pointed out that “messy” was a judgment. |
| verb + person + to + verb | encourage, advise, remind, warn (also tell, ask, persuade) | He encouraged Amara to give the feedback live. |
| verb + to + verb | offer, agree, refuse (also promise) | Kenji offered to play Iryna. |
| verb + for + -ing | apologize (to someone) for | Amara apologized for raising it. |
| not + to / -ing | not goes before to or the -ing form | He warned her not to start with a question. |
From what was said to the report
Start from the words, then name what the speaker did. Why don't you practice it out loud? becomes He suggested practicing it out loud. Don't start with that question becomes He warned her not to start, with not before to.
What they said
- “Why don't you practice it out loud?”
- “I can play Iryna.”
- “You should give the feedback live.”
- “Sorry I raised it.”
- “Don't start with that question.”
How you report it
- He suggested practicing it out loud.
- He offered to play Iryna.
- He encouraged her to give the feedback live.
- She apologized for raising it.
- He warned her not to start with that question.
Suggest, advise and explain: the tricky three
Suggest never takes a person + to; use -ing or that: She suggested that we show one screen. Advise takes -ing, or a person + to: He advised me to wait. Explain needs to before the person: She explained to me that the demo had run over.
- suggest / recommend: -ing for the idea (She suggested showing one screen), or that + base form to say who should do it (She suggested that we show one screen).
- advise without a person takes -ing: He advised waiting until Monday. With a person: He advised me to wait.
- explain takes to before the person: She explained to me that the demo had run over.
- admit + -ing or that; with to, use -ing: She admitted (to) going too fast.
- apologize for + -ing: He apologized for being late.
- In the past, a that-clause usually moves one tense back: “I'm nervous.” → She admitted that she was nervous. Not after suggest and recommend (see above).
Why not just said?
Said is always possible, but it hides what the speaker did. In one-on-one notes, one verb carries the act: Kenji offered to play Iryna. Iryna explained that the demo had already run over. In the past, a that-clause usually moves one tense back, except after suggest and recommend.
Said is correct, but…
“He said that I should practice” is fine. But reporting verbs tell the story in one word: he suggested it, she admitted it, he offered, she warned you. Use them in one-on-one notes and feedback summaries, and check the pattern each verb needs.
From today's lesson
- Kenji offered to play Iryna in a practice call.
- “Iryna” explained that the demo had already run over.
- Amara apologized for raising the problem, and the impact disappeared.
- Kenji advised her to thank Iryna and give the impact anyway.
- Amara suggested showing one screen at a time.
- Kenji warned her not to start with “Can I give you some feedback?”
Typical mistakes
She suggested me to split the ticket.
She suggested splitting the ticket. / She suggested that I split the ticket.
suggest + -ing or that, never + person + to
He recommended to use a feature flag.
He recommended using a feature flag.
recommend + -ing or that, not to + verb
I admitted to forget the impact.
I admitted forgetting the impact. / I admitted that I had forgotten the impact.
admit + -ing or that; after admit to, use -ing
She explained me that the demo had run over.
She explained (to me) that the demo had run over.
explain to someone, never explain someone
More lessons on this grammar: Reported speech lessons and exercises
Try the reporting verbs exercises
Try them yourself: these are the same exercises your students do in edio.
What's in the lesson
- 13 auto-checked exercises
- 2 games
- 2 teacher-checked tasks
- 2 real-life documents
- 1 article
- 1 grammar scheme
- 1 set of word cards
- 1 audio clip
- 1 picture
- 1 transcript
The main objectives of this lesson are to:
- report advice and admissions with each verb's pattern: He suggested practicing it out loud. She admitted going too fast.
- use a person + to after encourage, advise, remind and warn: He warned her not to start with a question.
- avoid three classic slips: suggested me to, recommended to use, explained me that
- give SBI feedback on a real moment, from the situation to the impact, then ask about intent: What were you trying to show there?
Lesson 23 sits in the middle of Growing your career, unit 8 of English for IT B2 · Beyond the Code, a unit on feedback, retros and career talk. It takes the reported speech of English for IT B1 lesson 20 (She said that…, He asked if…) further, to verbs that name what the speaker did, and lesson 24 asks for SBI feedback again when learners lead a retro.
After a spin-the-wheel talk about feedback at work, learners meet twelve words on cards with pictures and audio, among them blind spot, point out and act on. The story explains the SBI model, Situation, Behavior, Impact, taught by the Center for Creative Leadership. In Amara's messages to Kenji, a vague Great demo! turns into SBI feedback; students check them and sort feedback lines into the three steps, then hear the two practice the talk in an AI-voiced call. The scheme leads into five self-checking drills, from sorting verbs by their pattern to Amara's notes from the call. In the speaking chapter, students receive feedback on a demo in a chat and give some back, then open boxes for SBI role-plays and discussion.
Homework begins with a phrase bank, then a choice of verbs in a message to the tech lead and a sentence-halves match, both self-checking. Students then write SBI feedback for a colleague, report the reply with at least four reporting verbs and record the feedback as if on a call, for the teacher to review.
- Grammar:
- reporting verbs · verb patterns after reporting verbs
- Topic:
- feedback · one-on-ones · the SBI model
Teaching tips
- Start from feedback learners really got: each writes down the last vague comment they heard at work, such as Nice work!, and rewrites it in SBI form before reading the messages.
- Stop the practice call at It wasn't a big deal: ask what happened to the impact and what the speaker could say instead, then play on to hear her second try.
- Turn the open-box role-plays into a reporting drill: after each feedback talk, partners write three lines of notes with suggested, admitted and offered, then compare versions.
- Set one ground rule for in-company groups: feedback practice uses invented or public moments, never a colleague in the room, unless both people agree.
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The whole course: English for IT B2 · Beyond the Code
24 lessons at B2 for software teams, in American English. A year on at Kestrel Cloud, a fictional payments startup, Iryna and her team estimate work, write docs and postmortems, argue trade-offs, give demos and negotiate scope. Each lesson starts from a real case, from the Apollo 11 alarms to Conway's law.See the course
Unit 1 Planning and estimates
estimates and deadlines: approximating numbers, the future continuous and perfect, likelihood
Unit 2 Docs people read
specs and design docs: modals for requirements, participle clauses, plain English
Unit 3 Incidents and postmortems
telling an incident without blame: narrative tenses, the passive, the third conditional
Unit 4 Architecture and trade-offs
comparing options and recording decisions: contrast linkers, modals of deduction, mixed conditionals
Unit 5 Demos and tech talks
a clear structure on stage: signposting, cleft sentences, describing trends
Unit 6 Stakeholders and scope
saying no and finding yes: diplomatic language, as long as and unless, negotiating
Unit 7 AI, security and ethics
AI tools, passwords and team rules: be used to and get used to, past modals of deduction, purpose linkers
Unit 8 Growing your career
feedback, retros and goals: phrasal verbs, reporting verbs, wish and if only
Lesson 22Your next levelCareer phrasal verbs and goal frames
Lesson 23 · you're hereFeedback that helpsReporting verbs and their patterns
Lesson 24Start, stop, continueWish and if only for wishes and regrets
