Introducing Carrot

Image made using photos taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @purple_steph, @ALiCe_M, @thornburyscott and @thornburyscott used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/1.

MAIN AIMS Speaking to negotiate and persuade, vocabulary expansion, listening for detail

SUITABLE FOR Teens and adults, Upper-intermediate (B2), except the last step, Advanced (C1).

TEACHER’S NOTES  (Click here for a pdf of the Teacher’s Notes)

1. Ask your students to form four small groups (or eight for a larger class).

2. Show them the mosaic above (or use this one). Tell them to use their mobiles to find out the names of the fruit and vegetables shown (from top left to bottom right: red cabbage, Brussels sprout, quince, artichoke).

3. Ask them to tell each other whether they they like these foods and how often they eat them.

4. Assign one of the photos to each group. Tell them that they work for an advertising agency which has been given the job of marketing these unglamorous products to teenagers. They have to come up with an idea for a one-minute commercial that will change the way the target market sees their fruit or vegetable. Set a time limit of ten minutes.

5. Each team presents their idea to the rest of the class, who then vote for the one they like best.

6. Now tell students that they are going to see a video promoting another common vegetable.

7. Play the video. After watching, in their groups students note down all the words they heard that they would normally associate with a touchscreen device.

8. Display this word cloud containing vocabulary from the clip and tell students to look up any new words.

9. Form new groups and play the video again. With their new partners, they have to use the vocabulary from the word cloud to describe the features of “carrot”.

10. Display or hand out the full text so learners can compare what they said with the original version.

11. They will probably ask about the reference to integration with Beats by Dre. Play the video again from 00:38 to 00:40 and pause it. Explain that Beats by Dre is a company that produces audio equipment, mainly headphones and speakers., which was acquired by Apple in 2014. Tell students to look at the image on the screen. Does anyone know the name of the brownish vegetable? It’s a beet (in American English) or beetroot (in British English).

12. Students look at the word cloud again. Do they know any other meanings of the words? Once they’ve had a chance to discuss / check in dictionaries, ask them to do this exercise. (Here are the answers.)