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This is a speaking topic designed for teenagers that could also be used with adults. It consists of hypothetical questions with “could you…?” for example: “could you live without your mobile?”
Put students in small groups (3/4) or you could make it an open class discussion. Download the powerpoint below.
Image credit: www.groupon.co.in
Credit to Jonathan Watts at the Guardian for the article.
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This is a reading and speaking lesson plan based around an article about the WHO’s recent revelation linking consumption of red meat to cancer for B2+. Download the student’s and teacher’s copy of the article below:
Argentines meat cancer article TEACHERS COPY
Argentines meat cancer article STUDENT’S COPY
Influenced by my wonderful DELTA tutors I’ve split the text up into sections. Before reading each section students make a prediction about what they’re about to read and then read to confirm their predictions. They then read again and complete comprehension questions that go into more detail.
Lesson structure:
Give students ample time between sections and after finishing the article to respond and interact with the text.
The article:
Argentinians react to report linking meat to cancer.
As he prepared to order lunch in one of Buenos Aires’ many steak restaurants, Jorge Bacaloni declared himself unlikely to change his beef-centred diet despite the World Health Organisation’s conclusion that red meats are more carcinogenic than previously thought.
In a report published on Monday, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that red meat is “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
But in Argentina, which has one of the highest levels of meat consumption in the world, the study was met with scepticism.
“I’m aware of the health risks, but it’s part of our culture,” said Bacaloni, who estimates that he eats between a kilogram and 1.5kgs of meat each week.
Most of that is from cattle, putting Bacaloni around the average in Argentina, where consumption per capita was 59.4kg of beef in 2014.
As well as the pure pleasure of home grills and estraña dishes in beef houses, the lawyer said that it was a custom. “This is part of our history. Part of our life,” he says. “And at least cows in Argentina are raised on pastures rather than in sheds. It’s more natural.”
But he was more concerned for his family that the World Health Organisation had classified processed meat in the same cancer-risk category as cigarettes, alcohol and asbestos.
“I have a three-year-old son. We’ve been giving him sausage, but I’ll stop that,” he said. He too is adjusting his diet, though for different reasons. “I’ll have chicken today, but only because I’m on a diet.”
Fashion designer Marcela Duhalde laughs when she explains how often she eats steak. “l hate cooking so when I have to make food I always choose a T-bone steak and tomatoes because it’s easy and delicious. I have it maybe four or five times a week,” she says. “I ought to be huge.”
Raised on a farm, she says eating meat is a custom. “My family was very carnivorous. If we didn’t have meat, we didn’t consider it a meal.”
This is a common refrain. The first cattle were introduced by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century and they soon became a feature on the pampas – the vast grasslands that stretch across much of the country – while their meat was an integral part of the gaucho “cowboy” culture.
Duhalde says she is concerned about the agrochemicals, antibiotics, tainted cattle feed and the generally poor conditions that many cattle are kept in, but vegetarianism is not option. Nor it seems is cutting back.
“Everything I like is unhealthy – steak, alcohol, drugs and other things. I’d rather die than give it all up. I don’t have the energy to be happy without them.”
She didn’t expect the WHO decision to make much of an impact on Argentina’s love of steaks in the short term, but she thought it could make a difference in the distant future if the evidence mounted up and led to the same sort of health campaigns that are now common with tobacco.
“This makes us start thinking about the risks, but there is a big distance between thinking about things and actually changing our habits.”
Follow up
Students write an essay examining the importance of meat in their culture and the effect they think the announcement will have.
Image credit: www.learnaboutislam.co.uk
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This is a conversation lesson plan for intermediate (B1) upwards around the topic of blame. Download the powerpoint below:
Warmer
SS discuss in pairs:
Language of blaming:
SS complete the sentences with the following words:
for
on
blame
wrong
fault (x2)
Show the first slide from the powerpoint and have students discuss who is to blame in small groups. Ss then report back in open class. You might want to assign roles from the different situations to different students to make it a bit more exciting.
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This is a speaking activity for intermediate and upwards on the subject of persuading and convincing. It can be used as preparation for FCE and CAE due to its similarity to part 3 of the speaking test.
You will need this powerpoint:
Split the class into groups of 4 or 5. Use this quizlet set to practice language for convincing and persuading. For higher levels get them to brainstorm the language in pairs first and then board it.
Language from the quizlet set:
Key:
think
Wouldn’t
should
going
ought
insist
far
about
Students discuss the different situations in the powerpoint in their groups of 4-5. Nominate one person from the group to be the person who the others must persuade (parent, headmaster, boss, editor, friend)
Report back at the end. Who was the most persuasive?
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This year I’m doing the DELTA part-time at IH Barcelona and I’m going to start blogging some of my lesson plans, feedback and general reactions to the course as I go.
Two weeks ago I had my diagnostic observation, basically my tutor and teaching practice group observed me while I taught a group of upper-intermediate adults for 45 minutes. Despite my nerves it went pretty well but my tutor’s main criticism was that it was too teacher centred and not learner-led enough. So it’s my second observed class tomorrow and I’ve prepared the following lesson plan to teach present perfect/past simple to the same group. My tutors are big on reactive teaching so I’m going to throw my students straight into a communicative exercise and then I’m going to correct them as I go and clear up any issues they have afterwards.
My aims are for the students to use the two tenses accurately and also use a range of time expressions. I’ve included they time expressions in the questions they have to ask in a classic “Find someone who” exercise. Let me know what you think and wish me luck!
TP 2nd class Present Per/Past Simple
Warmer
I’ve injured my foot. Questions. Have you ever had an accident? What happened? Were you ok? Reactions: Oooo, that’s gotta hurt! Nasty! You poor thing!
Find someone who
Sentences to collect:
| Present Perfect | Past simple | both |
| For, since, already, yet just,
Over the last fortnight |
Ago, in the summer, this time last week, earlier today, last month | For |
| Uses:
Past experiences, don’t say when, unfinished times: never, in my life, this year, today etc.
Recent events, no exact time, some relevance to present. Just/already etc. Do you want a cup of coffee? No thanks I’ve just had one.
Continuing situations, started in past, continue now: for/since I’ve lived here for 6 years.
|
Uses:
Complete/finished event, time is given: last month, yesterday etc. or obvious.
Did you see the game? I went to the cinema last night.
Situation/habit that started and finished in past.
I lived in France for 3 years. I played piano for 5 years when I was a child. |
Memory Game:
1 student covers their paper while the other asks questions to see what they remember. Focus should be on remembering the correct tense and time expression.
Demonstrate:
Who has been to the cinema over the last fortnight?
What did _______take up last month?
What has _______ just bought?
Who hasn’t washed last night’s dishes yet?
Find someone in the class who has done all these things:
| Name | Details | |
| Has been to Morocco
|
||
| Has just bought a new gadget | ||
| Visited another country in the summer | ||
| Hasn’t washed last night’s dishes yet | ||
| Wasn’t in class this time last week. | ||
| Has lived in their house for over 30 years | ||
| Went shopping earlier today | ||
| Has been to the cinema over the last fortnight | ||
| Has already planned dinner for tonight | ||
| Took up a new hobby last month | ||
| Has tried a new dish lately. |
Image credit: thelondonacornschool.co.uk
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This is a reading and conversation lesson plan for high B2+ students, based around an article in the guardian newspaper about the acorn school in London which has a no technology policy for students, both at school and at home.
Download the abbreviated version of the article and the lesson plan here:
Warmer
Describe the classroom in our first school. Did it have a blackboard? Decorations? Computers? What were the desks like? How were they arranged?
How did the teachers present information to you? On the board? With a projector? Flipchart? Powerpoint?
How have new technologies changed education?
Do you think they have changed it for the better?
Article
What technology do schools use nowadays?
In what ways does technology help/hinder learning?
At what ages do you think children should start using the following things?
Give out the article and have students read it and underline any vocabulary they have problems with. They should then ask their partner for help with the vocab.
What do you think of this idea?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of this approach?
How do you think children would react to this approach?
Would you consider sending your children to this school?
Debate
Motion for debate:
“Children should not use any technology until the age of 12”
Put the class into 2 teams, try to choose the teams so that students have to argue against their own beliefs.
Image credit: www.wnyc.org
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This is the first of a new series of lesson plans based around different podcasts for proficiency and post-proficiency students. They’re appropriate for high C1+.
These lesson plans work in a similar way to the Proficiency Book Club series; set the podcast as homework so that students can listen to it at their leisure and then discuss it in the following class. For this lesson plans students will need to listen to the first part of the Darkode podcast by the amazing radiolab team of Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad. Download the plan here:
Proficiency Podcast Darkode LP
Lead in
How computer literate are you?
How often do you use a computer?
Could you live without one?
What would you lose if your computer suddenly died or was stolen?
Have you or anyone you know ever been hacked?
What do you do to stay safe online?
Darkode Discussion
What happened to Ina?
Russian hackers hacked her computer and held all her files hostage for 500 dollars.
Where does she suspect the hackers are from?
Russia or the Ukraine
Why did she decide to pay?
Her husband’s tax receipts are worth more than $500.
What does she have to do?
Get $500 in bitcoins to pay the ransom
What happened when she decrypted one file?
A timer started counting down until the files would be permanently deleted.
What are bitcoins?
An unregulated, untraceable online currency.
What did she have to do to get the bitcoins?
A lot of paperwork, take a photo of her husband holding his driving licence, get in contact with coincafe.com and send them the $500 from the post office.
What different problems did she encounter?
A snowstorm, thanksgiving holiday, the change in exchange rate.
How did she overcome in the problem of the exchange rate?
Contacted her daughter in Brooklyn to get her to go to the Bitcoin ATM.
What happened next?
She paid the ransom but she was 2.5 hours late, she received a message telling her she now had t pay $1000.
How did she solve this problem?
She wrote to them in Russian explaining all the problems she had encountered and the hackers took pity on her and decrypted her files.
Who else has been a victim of cryptowall?
Police departments, universities and normal people.
How many people have been a victim of cryptowall?
1 million.
Discussion
What would you do it this happened to you? Would you pay?
How much are the files on your computer worth to you?
If you could save 1 file from your computer which would it be?
Vocabulary
Here are some phrases and words taken from the podcast:
top it up/off – to refill something to the top. I topped up my wine glass.
pay a ransom – to pay a criminal to return something or someone they have taken
playdate – US, when parents meet up so that their children can play together.
speak in airquotes – to make quotation mark gestures with your fingers while speaking to show that you’re not speaking literally.
Image credit: theguardian.com
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Download the worksheet here:
And the picture reveal powerpoint here:
Yet another lesson plan on picture descriptions, deduction and speculation. What can I say? I’ve got to prep a lot of students for FCE speaking!
Warmer – Who’s this?
Show students the picture of BBC radio 2 DJ Steve Wright but don’t tell them who it is. Put them in groups and tell them to come up with an idea of who he is. Monitor and check what language they’re using, board any nice examples of speculative language.
Students present their ideas of who he is. After reveal that he is a famous radio DJ in the UK.
Speculative Language
Handout the exercise on the worksheet. Have students complete the gap-fill in pairs; encourage them to discuss it in English: “Number 1 could be …, don’t you think?” etc.
Complete the sentences with a word from the box
| guess can’t as could/might/may perhaps pretty must |
Review as a class:
Choral drill sentences for intonation and sentence stress.
Practice
Show students the pictures of more English celebrities. Elicit the instructions to the next activity, (use the new language to speculate about the people in the photographs)
Students share ideas as a class, award points to groups that guess correctly.
Answers:
Picture Reveal Game
Massive thanks to https://tekhnologic.wordpress.com/ for the amazing picture reveal powerpoint template I’ve used for this next activity.
Project the first slide of the picture reveal powerpoint. Students take it in turns to choose a number, click on the number and it will disappear, revealing part of the picture underneath. Students must then speculate as to what the picture is. Award points for correct use of the phrases and teams that correctly guess the contents of the photo.
Slide 4 is an actual FCE part 2 task with 2 pictures to compare and contrast, while slide 5 is a part 3 collaborative task that students can complete in pairs or threes at the end of the game.
Follow-up
Nominate a few students to bring a photo to the next class to repeat the activity as a warmer.
Thanks to my colleague Raquel Gomez for introducing me to Macmillan’s amazing database of resources:
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/learn/english-language-resources.html
She focused specifically on the pragmatics section in a seminar she recently gave in my school. She ran an experiment last year using the materials to boost scores for FCE and CAE speaking exams so I’m going to try them out for myself today, starting with this one on agreeing and disagreeing:
Image Credit: www.visualnews.com
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This is a lesson plan for intermediate and up based around pictures of interesting people and language of speculation and deduction. Credit to my workmate Mont for the idea, thanks Mont.
Download the handout here:
speculate pictures interesting people
Warmer – Who’s that guy?
Write the following expressions on the board:
He might/may/could be… (possible)
There’s a chance that he’s… (possible)
He can’t be… (impossible)
There’s no way he’s… (impossible)
He must be… (almost certain)
I’m pretty sure he’s… (quite certain)
Then show them the picture of the guy at the top of the post. Students come up with 5 deductions/speculations based on the picture. Tell them they can speculate about his age, nationality, job, personality or anything else they like.
The show them the pictures from the handout. Give them a few minutes to make speculations about the people.
Then show them the following list:
Tell student that they must decide which person has which job. The secret is: There’s no correct answer! But don’t tell them that yet. Give them 5-10 minute to make speculations and provide reasons for which person has which job, then have them present their reasoning to the class and debate them. Only then can you reveal that there’s no correct answer!
Follow up activity
Composition: Can you judge a book by it’s cover? Have students write and essay/article on the topic of first impressions and judging people based on their appearance.