Lexis Lesson · Two Meetings, One Disaster

01

Warm-up · 4 min

What you said first

Say the one sentence from your homework — the first thing you said when the client raised the cost. Do not judge it yet. Just say it.

02

Input & Noticing · 14 min

Two meetings, one disaster

Same scope, same objection, two designers.

Meeting A

Owner: "Look, this is coming in over what we talked about at the start. The wall and the spa together — that’s a lot."

Designer: "That’s fair. The retaining wall got more expensive once we added the engineering for the swim spa surcharge. Can I ask — is it the wall or the spa that concerns you more?"

Owner: "Probably the wall. I didn’t expect it to be that much."

Designer: "Understood. One option: we could phase the wall — build the lower courses this year, within budget, and finish the top next spring. It doesn’t change the design, only the schedule. Would that work?"

Owner: "That could work. Let me think about it."

Meeting B

Owner: "This is coming in over budget. The wall and the spa together — that’s a lot."

Designer: "The wall has to be engineered because of the swim spa surcharge load. That’s just how it is with a spa that size."

Owner: "I understand that, but it’s a lot of money."

Designer: "It’s the code. I didn’t invent the requirement."

Owner: "I’m not saying you did. I’m asking if there’s anything we can do about the cost."

Designer: "Not really. Not if you want the spa."

Owner: "Okay. I need to think about this."

Teacher note Both meetings are constructed for this course, not a real transcript — the sets contain the scope, not the conversation that priced it. The owner is invented and named "Mr. Alvarez," per source-corpus.md handling rule 3. The numbers and materials are real: this is the actual Colonial Ln. scope — stair, wooden deck, retaining wall, paver installation, swim spa and hot tub installation.

Both designers are correct about the code. The swim-spa surcharge load is real; the wall genuinely needed engineering because of it. Meeting B is not a failure of technical knowledge — everything the designer says is true.

It is a failure of three specific moves, and you can find the exact point each one is missing:

Where does A acknowledge the objection, and B does not?
Where does A ask a diagnostic question that B never asks?
Where does A propose something, and B simply stops?

03

Focus on Form · 10 min

Acknowledge → reframe → propose

The three moves, from Meeting A

Move	Does what	Line from Meeting A
1 · Acknowledge	Confirms the concern is heard, before defending anything	"That’s fair."
2 · Reframe	Turns a general complaint into a specific, answerable question	"Is it the wall or the spa that concerns you more?"
3 · Propose	Offers a concrete next step, not just an explanation	"We could phase the wall… would that work?"

Meeting B has none of the three. "The wall has to be engineered" is an explanation, not an acknowledgement — it defends before confirming the concern was heard. "It’s the code, I didn’t invent the requirement" is true and also a small act of blame-shifting, which the owner immediately (and correctly) pushes back on. And the conversation simply ends at "not really" — no reframe, no proposal, nothing for the owner to do except go away and worry.

This is the same failure shape as Unit 7’s missing conclusion and Unit 8’s missing locator: being correct is necessary and not sufficient. The move that closes the interaction is the one under pressure to skip.

04

Controlled Practice · 14 min

Find the moves

Lexical Matching

Match each line to the move it performs. Click the line, then its move.

Acknowledge

Reframe

Propose

Explain — necessary, but not one of the three moves on its own

Deflect — shifts responsibility instead of moving the conversation forward

05

Communicative Task · 10 min

Rewrite Meeting B

Task card

Meeting B, from the line "It’s the code. I didn’t invent the requirement."

Continue the meeting from that exact line, using all three moves, out loud.

You do not get to change what came before — pick it up from that line.
Acknowledge first, even though it is late. Then reframe. Then propose.
End with something the owner can actually decide on.

06

Feedback · 4 min

Which move was hardest to add?

Of the three, which was hardest to insert once the conversation had already gone wrong? That is worth naming, because it is the one to rehearse most.

07

Wrap-up · 4 min

Before the next lesson

Homework. Write one sentence for a change you could never have offered (something not actually possible on a real project) and one you genuinely could. Bring both — next lesson is about the grammar that tells them apart.