This Saturday 17th April, Katy Wright and I will be giving a webinar as part of the APAC Spring Workshop series.
The theme of the series is Teaching Outside the Box and the title of our webinar is: What 2020 Taught us and How to Keep it Going. We’ll look at lessons we’ve learned from teaching during the pandemic and share practical ideas and lesson plans.
Follow the link below to sign up!
https://www.apac365.org/campaign-2
This is another edition of my “Where do you Stand?” conversation series. Students debate different topics related to entertainment and culture but must rate the opinion on a scale from 1-6 before they begin the discussion.
The PowerPoint contains examples of language of opinion, agreement and disagreement designed with C1 students in mind. If you are teaching lower level students, you could just use the student handout. You can download a B2 phrase sheet here.
Here are the topics students discuss:
The book is always better than the film.
There are too many sequels and spin-off films these days. There aren’t many original stories.
The original version of a song is always the best.
Celebrities shouldn’t complain about being in the public eye. It’s part of the jobNetflix will kill the cinema.
You shouldn’t watch films on your phone. It ruins the experience.
Watching a film at the cinema is always better than at home.
Violent films and videogames should be banned.
Music, art and drama should be compulsory subjects at school.
Social media companies should be responsible for the content that users post on their platforms.
Children shouldn’t play with “violent” toys like guns and weapons.
Something is always lost when a text is translated.
Physical books will disappear one day.
Governments should be allowed to censor some elements of the media including books and films.
The benefits of social media platforms outweigh the negative aspects.
Sports involving animals (hunting, horse riding, bullfighting, etc.) are an important part of my culture and must be protected.
Watching too much television makes you stupid.
A simple conversation activity I designed as a follow-up to my previous post entitled “A Weekend Off”. It can be used with B1+ students. Students discuss various topics related to parenthood, kids and growing up. Download the handout below:
Put students in pairs or small groups and have them discuss the questions. Pause regularly to feedback in open class. The activity should generate a lot of emergent language.
Student Handout
What do you think are the biggest challenges for new parents?
How is growing up different for:
What position were you in your family?
What are some stereotypes associated with the different positions among siblings?
What are the pros and cons of being an only child?
What do children learn from having siblings?
What do you think is the perfect number of children to have?
What are the pros and cons of these stages of children’s lives?
What’s the most rewarding and most challenging aspect of each stage?
This is a grammar lesson focusing on inversions based around the topic of the stresses of parenthood. Students read a text about new parents who get a weekend off, then transform the text using inversions. Download the handout and teacher’s notes below.
Possible Follow-up
As a follow-up to this lesson plan, you might want to revise inverted conditionals with your C1 students. To do so, you could use this great worksheet created by Andrew Farmer @andrewfarmer80:
Alternatively, you could set this page of inversion Key Word Transformations:
This lesson plan is designed to be used in several ways depending on your students’ level. The grammar focus is inversions, a structure that typically comes up at C1.
Write these questions on the board and have students discuss them in groups:
Feedback in open class and top up language. Somethings that came up with my students were:
Give out the text, fold the page so that they can’t see the grammar focus part yet, or just share the text if you’re teaching online.
Instruct students to read the text and find the answers to the lead in questions for the couple the text describes:
Feedback in open class.
Here is where you can choose a different path depending on how familiar your students are with inversions.
C1 – Introduction to inversions
C1 – Inversion Revision
C2 – Inversion Revision Super Challenge
Task Check
Show them the second version of the text with all the inversions.
Rarely do we have much time to ourselves. So busy is our schedule that we just can’t find the time to get out of the house. Not only do my husband and I both work full time, but we also have two small kids to look after. Little did I know that my parents were planning a special surprise for me this weekend. Only when I walked in the front door on Friday night did I discover what they had planned. No sooner had I opened the door than they appeared with a bottle of wine and the news that they were taking the kids to the local theme park for the weekend. Obviously the kids were ecstatic, not since they were four years old have they been to the theme park and that was just for 1 day, now they were going for a whole weekend! So grateful were we that we gave my mum and dad a massive hug. However, there had to be some ground rules for the kids. We told them that under no circumstances should they annoy grandma and grandad and on no account must they eat too many sweets before going on the roller coasters.
Hardly had my parents left the house when we opened the bottle of wine and sat on the sofa enjoying the sudden peace and quiet. Not until we sat down did we realise how tired we were. Hardly ever do we get a chance to watch a movie together over a glass of wine. However, barely had we chosen a movie and started watching it when we both fell asleep. Not until the next morning when we woke up did we appreciate how quiet the house was. Not since our second daughter was born had we had the house to ourselves. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves!
Challenge students to work in groups to continue the story. How did the couple spend the rest of their weekend off? Set them a time limit of ten minutes and encourage them to use as many inversions as they can.
This is a guest post by Alice from Hot Take English on the topic of superstitions and bad luck. Students discuss common superstitions in English speaking cultures and their own, then read an article about some seriously bad luck. The main grammar focus of the lesson is the 3rd conditional to talk about hypothetical past events. Download the handout and teacher’s notes below:
Visit https://www.hottakeenglish.com/ to check out more of Alice’s work. She has some great, free materials on a range of engaging topics.
What Bad Luck – Student Worksheet
1) Warmer: superstitions
Below is a list of good and bad superstitions that are particularly popular in the UK and Ireland. Discuss them with a partner. From where do you think they originate? Do you believe they bring bad/good luck?
Things that bring bad luck:
Things that bring good luck:
What superstitions are there in your culture or country?
2) Vocabulary
Match the words on the left with their meanings on the right.
| 1. jackpot | a) extremely shocked |
| 2. invalidated | b) the sale was not successful/the money was not taken out of the person’s bank account |
| 3. stunned | c) not enough |
| 4. draw | d) the most valuable prize in a game or contest |
| 5. the payment didn’t go through | e) very very happy |
| 6. insufficient | f) stopped a ticket from being legally or officially acceptable |
| 7. on top of the world | g) the act of selecting numbers or names randomly to decide the winners of a competition |
3) Comprehension check
Read the article. Are these statements true or false?
4) Grammar practice
With a partner, write down as many third conditional sentences about the article as you can.
E.g. “If the payment had gone through, they would have won the lottery”.
Writing: My Biggest Regret
Write 100-500 words about your “biggest regret”. Include some third conditional sentences.
The 19-year-old was in shock when her numbers came up – until she noticed a critical problem
Originally published 2 March 2021
A 19-year-old student who thought she had won a £182m lottery jackpot has been left “absolutely heartbroken” after realising an error invalidated the ticket.
Rachel Kennedy, 19, and her boyfriend Liam McCrohan, 21, were stunned when their regular numbers of 6, 12, 22, 29, 33, 6 and 11 came up in the EuroMillions mega jackpot.
Kennedy had played the same numbers for five weeks in a row and had a direct debit set up to automatically play the numbers each week.
The teen was greeted with a message saying she had a ‘winning match’ after last Friday’s draw, according to The Sun.
However, the business student’s hopes of being one of the richest women in Britain were crushed when she found the ticket sale had not gone through due to insufficient funds in her account.
Rachel, of Brighton University, said: “I called my boyfriend Liam and my mum into the room and they couldn’t believe it either so I was like, ‘Oh! My God! I need to call them’.
“I called the number thinking that I had won £182m and they said ‘yeah you’ve got the right numbers but you didn’t have the funds in your account for the payment of the ticket so it didn’t actually go through’.
“I was on top of the world when I thought I had won, but when I found out I hadn’t, Liam was actually more upset than me.”
Rachel said they were “absolutely heartbroken” – and now thinks of her usual weekly numbers as “unlucky” and has decided to change them.
Source: iNews, https://inews.co.uk/news/euromillions-jackpot-player-heartbroken-finding-error-cost-182m-ticket-895016
This is a guest post by Darren Wynne-Jones on the topic of personality traits. It was designed with one-to-one adult classes in mind but could also be used for group classes. Download the handout below:
This is a flipped 1 hour(ish) lesson for strong upper-int / advanced students focussing on adjectives to describe personality traits. This lesson uses an online personality quiz, a worksheet from Onestopenglish, and a heavy focus on emergent language. I have created a Quizlet set including all the terms on the worksheet for students to use for self-study after the lesson. I created this lesson for one-to-one classes but it is easily adaptable for groups.
Thanks to https://tefltastic.wordpress.com/ for the inspiration for this activity.
In this lesson plan students reform a jumbled story using dependent prepositions and other collocations as clues. Download the handout below:
Procedure
| My wife and I had been planning our trip to Japan for ages. Endless nights fantasising |
| about spending our honeymoon in one of the most spectacular countries on earth. We opted |
| for a small apartment in downtown Tokyo to get the authentic experience. When you’re weighing |
| up the different options, it’s worth bearing |
| in mind just how small the apartments in Japan are and the proximity to the other people around you can really catch you |
| off guard. We spent the first 5 days seeing the sights and experiencing everything the city had |
| to offer. However, we soon realised that we were running low |
| on funds and that we couldn’t afford |
| to spend any more time in such a pricey place. So we decided to head |
| for the hills and experience rural Japan. This turned out to be the by far the best decision we |
| made. We went on one hike to a hidden temple, it was so tranquil and was an unforgettable experience. |
| My wife and I had been planning our trip to Japan for ages. Endless nights fantasising |
| on funds and that we couldn’t afford |
| about spending our honeymoon in one of the most spectacular countries on earth. We opted |
| for the hills and experience rural Japan. This turned out to be the by far the best decision we |
| to offer. However, we soon realised that we were running low |
| off guard. We spent the first 5 days seeing the sights and experiencing everything the city had |
| for a small apartment in downtown Tokyo to get the authentic experience. When you’re weighing |
| in mind just how small the apartments in Japan are and the proximity to the other people around you can really catch you |
| to spend any more time in such a pricey place. So we decided to head |
| made. We went on one hike to a hidden temple, it was so tranquil and was an unforgettable experience. |
| up the different options, it’s worth bearing |
Recall Exercises
Use version 1 as immediate follow-up practice, then use version 2 in the next class or a week later to see how much they have retained.
Version 1
My wife and I had been planning our trip to Japan ….. ages. Endless nights fantasising ……. spending our honeymoon in one of the most spectacular countries on earth. We opted ….. a small apartment in downtown Tokyo to get the authentic experience. When you’re weighing ….. the different options, it’s worth bearing ….. mind just how small the apartments in Japan are and the proximity ……. the other people around you can really catch you …… guard. We spent the first 5 days seeing the sights and experiencing everything the city had …… offer. However, we soon realised that we were running low …… funds and that we couldn’t afford ….. spend any more time in such a pricey place. So we decided to head …… the hills and experience rural Japan. This turned …… to be the by far the best decision we …….. We went on one hike to a hidden temple, it was so tranquil and was an unforgettable experience.
Version 2
My wife and I had been planning our trip to Japan for …… Endless nights ………… about spending our honeymoon in one of the most spectacular countries on earth. We …… for a small apartment in downtown Tokyo to get the authentic experience. When you’re ……… up the different options, it’s worth ……… in mind just how small the apartments in Japan are and the ………. to the other people around you can really catch you off …….. We spent the first 5 days seeing the sights and experiencing everything the city …… to offer. However, we soon realised that we were running …… on funds and that we couldn’t ……. to spend any more time in such a pricey place. So we decided to ……. for the hills and experience rural Japan. This ……. out to be the by far the best ……… we made. We went on one hike to a hidden temple, it was so tranquil and was an unforgettable experience.
In this lesson plan students preparing for the C2 Proficiency exam develop their understanding of some key fixed expressions that often come up in part 4 of the use of English. Download the handout and homework exercise below:
You may want to use this quizlet set for spaced repetition of the expressions.
Procedure
Students read the expressions in bold and discuss the meaning with their partner. Encourage them to paraphrase the expression and make any notes on the grammar that might be relevant: specific prepositions, verb patterns that may follow it (gerund/infinitive etc.)
Students then flip the paper over and attempt to remember the expressions using the key words as prompts. They can check their answers by looking back at page 1. Ask students which expressions they struggled the most to recall.
Have students ask and answer the discussion questions in small groups.
Set the key word transformation worksheet for homework. You’ll find the answers in the quizlet set.
In this lesson plan students preparing for the C1 Advanced exam develop their understanding of some key fixed expressions that often come up in part 4 of the use of English. Download the handout and homework exercise below:
You could also play this Baamboozle game with students for spaced repetition.
These particular expressions are taken from this quizlet set of 82 different key word transformation expressions, you may want to use it for spaced repetition.
Procedure
Students read the expressions in bold and discuss the meaning with their partner. Encourage them to paraphrase the expression and make any notes on the grammar that might be relevant: specific prepositions, verb patterns that may follow it (gerund/infinitive etc.)
Students then flip the paper over and attempt to remember the expressions using the key words as prompts. They can check their answers by looking back at page 1. Ask students which expressions they struggled the most to recall.
Set the key word transformation worksheet for homework.
This is a lesson plan in which high level students get to grips with functional language and expressions used for complaining and criticising. Download the handout below:
Procedure
I recommend having your students complete the excellent lesson plan from the Macmillan Pragmatics page before using this lesson plan as it gives a great insight into language used for introducing and couching criticism.
Once you’ve done that, give out the handout and have students start to tackle the dialogue between Bob and his boss. Students should try to paraphrase the expressions and discuss their use.
Further idiomatic expressions and structures are then listed, have students discuss them in pairs and field any questions and doubts they may have.
Students then complete a controlled practice activity:
Complete the sentences with one word:
Now have students roleplay the scenarios and write up a dialogue for their favourite.
Set the writing task for homework, point out that the tone should be firm but friendly and informal. Encourage the use of as many expressions as possible.