A Brief Encounter with Grammar : I Wish
Posted: June 17, 2014 Filed under: Film clip, lesson plan | Tags: Brief Encounter, listening, personalisation, speaking, wish 12 Comments
Main Activities Prediction, listening, grammar (wishes) and speaking.
Suitable for Teens and adults, Pre-Advanced (B2.2) and above.
TEACHER’S NOTES (Click here for a pdf of theTeacher’s Notes.)
STEP 1
Put students into groups of three or four. Tell them that they’re going to see a short extract from a film.
STEP 2
Show the film from 07:18 to 10:11.
Then ask them to discuss the following questions:
- What’s happened to the woman?
- What’s the relationship between the two women?
- Is she glad that the other woman is keeping her company?
STEP 3
Get some theories from the groups and write them up on the board. Tell them that you’ll reveal the answer later.
STEP 4
Now see if anyone can answer this question: Which word did she use eight times? Hopefully, someone will come up with the answer “wish”.
STEP 5
Ask them if they can remember any of the things she said using it.
STEP 6
Show them the scene again, but don’t let them write as they watch. When they’ve seen it, ask them to complete the gaps in these sentences.
STEP 7
Let them decide if they’d like to see it one more time to check/improve their answers. Alternatively, play it again, pausing after each sentence.
STEP 8
Display or hand out the answers.
STEP 9
Ask them to divide the sentences (except 3 and 4) into two groups with different meanings and forms. They should decide what the meanings are and describe the rule for the form.
STEP 10
Display the first block of the infographic (either use the one above or click here for the first block only) so they can check their two groups and then reveal the second block, Groups 1 and 2, to see if they have come up with the same.
STEP 11
Now display the plot summary so they can see how close their theories were in step 3.
STEP 12
Ask how she feels about the affair. Does she regret it or not?
STEP 13
Display the third block of the infographic, True or False?. Ask the class to vote on whether the sentences are true or false. Then play the video from 09:27-10:11 again. (This shows that the first one is obviously false – the other two are debatable.)
STEP 14
Now ask them to make a third group for “wish” that describes the structure and meaning for these last three examples. They should come up with something like wish + past perfect verb form, used to express regret about the past.
STEP 15
Finally, reveal the fourth block of the infographic, Over to You, and ask students to complete the stem sentences with true desires, complaints and regrets of their own.
STEP 16
Get students to sit in groups of three, read their sentences to each other and then explain and comment.
Baseball Pitches
Posted: June 9, 2014 Filed under: lesson plan | Tags: baseball, observation, speaking, sports idioms, vocabulary 2 Comments
St Louis – Bush Stadium at Sunset by Joe Penniston is licensed under CCBY2.0
MAIN ACTIVITIES Vocabulary expansion, prediction, sports idioms
SUITABLE FOR Upper Intermediate (B2) and above
TEACHER’S NOTES (Click here for a pdf of the Teacher’s Notes.)
STEP 1
Show the class the word cloud below and ask them to name the sport.
STEP 2
Divide the class into four groups – A, B, C and D – and organise the groups in a rough circle around the room. There must be at least one person in each group who has a mobile phone or tablet with an internet connection. If you have a big class, you can make eight groups. Display this image and ask them to tell each other what they know about baseball – its vocabulary and its rules. They can use mobiles or dictionaries to look things up.
STEP 3
Ask each group to nominate one member, who must then go and “visit” the next group in a clockwise direction. The visitor and the group compare ideas. Afterwards, the visitors return to their respective groups and give some feedback.
STEP 4
Display this page from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary so that groups can check their predictions.
STEP 5
Tell students that it’s traditional in baseball to have a ceremonial opening pitch, usually performed by someone famous or to celebrate some special event. Tell them that they are going to watch a different YouTube video each showing ceremonial pitches which are famous for being unusual in some way. Each group has to watch their video and work out how to describe exactly what happened in English.
Get each group to watch one of the videos below. In class, you can do this by getting students to look for the video on YouTube using the descriptions in italics as follows:
Group A cirque du soleil baseball pitch
Group B Max Ashton baseball pitch
Group C Shin Soo-Ji baseball pitch
Group D Zombies baseball pitch
STEP 6
Give students time (and some help!) to come up with accurate descriptions of the scene.
STEP 7
Once they’re ready, reorganise the class into four new groups where there is a representative of each original group in each new one, i.e. the new groups are made up of at least one person each from A, B, C and D. There must be a mobile phone or tablet with an internet connection in each new group.
STEP 8
Each person now takes it in turns to show the opening scene of their original video, being careful to stop it before the ball is thrown. The others have to guess what happens next. The person who showed the video then gives a point to the person who was closest before describing verbally what happens in the video without showing it.
STEP 9
Once all the opening scenes have been seen, they then watch each full video to see what actually happens. Now the group have to decide who gets a point for having given the most accurate verbal description.
STEP 10
Ask students which video they liked best and why. To round off the lesson, ask students to use their mobiles or a dictionary to first figure out the meanings of these questions – all containing sporting idioms – and then answer them.
All at C 