Materials: this two-page worksheet, one copy per student; some blank paper (to make notes for feedback); a pen.

Procedure:

Warmer and word-ordering task

• Board: _________ dating.

  Ask Ss what words they know that can come before “dating” in English. Elicit “speed dating” if no-one suggests it (other possibilities are “online dating”, “internet dating”, “[to be] dating” – even “carbon dating” would fit!). Elicit the meanings of the collocations you and your students agree on, giving examples as necessary.

• Divide your students into pairs or threes. Show the class page one of the worksheet. Explain that it has 10 questions, but that the words are mixed up. Read out the first question, as it is written, and ask your class what’s wrong. Elicit what they have to do together (re-order the words to make English questions). Elicit they should try the next question if one is too hard. Agree on a task time limit (say, 5 minutes). If you like, you could turn this task into a game: board “stop!” and elicit that this is what groups should shout if they have finished. The first group to finish AND have all the questions correct wins the game.
• Start the activity and monitor it. Only help if you feel you have no choice; and be prepared to agree an extension on the time limit if your students ask for one.
• When the class is ready, stop the activity. Nominate different students to read you their completed questions, while the others listen carefully and check their versions – do they have the same? Again, you could turn this into a competition: one point for a correctly-formulated question; one point for a good correction; and whoever has the most points at the end wins (you should have ready a small prize for these competitions – a paper clip, a piece of blu-tack or something else that won’t cost you much, but lends an extra sense of fun).
• Ask your students if anyone can guess when these questions might be asked? (On a date, especially on a speed date).

Writing focus: practising question formation in English

• Tell the students to think about what other questions people might ask on a speed date. Ask them to work together (in their pairs or small groups) to think of more questions they could ask, and to write these down. Again, allow about five minutes for this.
• If you have an even number of groups, bring two together; ask them to swap questions and check each other’s grammar and vocabulary. Otherwise, ask each group to pass their questions to the group on their left and check grammar and vocab. Circulate and help with any problems your learners encounter.
• After a few minutes, invite one member of each group to return the questions to their writers, and discuss any changes they made. The groups can ask you if they are not sure.

Speed-dating discussion task

• When they have finished, ask your students to help you move the classroom furniture, so that they can sit opposite each other, in pairs. Then, sit your students in pairs, facing each other (if you have an odd number of students, make one group of three). One half of each pair is “A” and the other is “B”. Make sure your students know who is who :-)
• Board: “five minutes” and “Change!” Elicit that the students are going to practice having conversations in a speed date-like event, that they have five minutes to get to know their partner and that, after five minutes, you will shout change!, which means As have to move and sit with a new partner. Elicit that your students should ask the questions on page two of the worksheet: both their own and those provided. Elicit they can ask other questions which are not on the worksheet.
• Start the activity, boarding any useful expressions you hear in a gapfill (think also about expressions your students could have used, but didn’t – it can be good to challenge students by presenting them with alternative ways of saying things; I share some ideas on giving delayed error correction here).

Vocabulary-building and follow-on task

• Stop the activity after about 15 minutes. Point out the gapfill you’ve boarded, and explain these are all sentences the learners said, or nearly said. Ask them to work with their current partner and decide what the missing words are on your boarded gapfill. Allow a few minutes for them to discuss their ideas, then invite feedback.
• Ask your learners to choose five expressions from they board which they’d like to remember, and to write these on their question sheets.
• Either continue the activity, encouraging the learners to use the expressions they wrote, or ask them to form new groups of 3 or 4, and to ask their favourite questions, using some of the boarded expressions in their replies.

Follow-up

• Ask your students to write about their (or one of their speaking partner’s) ideal dates for homework; or ask them to write a profile for a dating website – again, either about them or one of the people they spoke with. These can then be shared (as long as your students are happy to do so), either with the person they wrote about, or with the class.

Materials: copies of this two-page worksheet, one per student (and one for yourself). Your students will need some blank paper and pens.

Procedure:

Guided visualisation

• Ask your learners to close their eyes. Ask them to imagine they are enjoying a wonderful date. Ask them to picture who they are with (it could be anybody). Is it daytime or in the evening? Where are they? What are they doing? What can they see? What can they hear? Are there any other people around them? If so, what are they doing?
• When the learners are ready, ask them to open their eyes. Pair your students, and ask them to tell their partner who they were with, where they were and what was happening around them.
• Ask a couple of students to tell us all about their partner’s imagined date. If they like, listening students can ask questions to the student whose date it was.

Mock speed date

• Ask your learners what it is like to go on a first date with someone: how do they feel? Where do they like to go? What kinds of things do they talk about? If you like, and your students would like to talk about this, encourage them to discuss this in pairs, and then groups of four or five. You can monitor their language and give some delayed feedback afterwards (see here for some ideas on giving delayed error correction).
• Otherwise, after hearing a few students’ answers to the questions above, ask each student, on their own, to write four or five questions they think would be good to ask someone on a first date. Divide your class into small groups and ask them to compare their questions: which do they like? Are there any they think would be dangerous or inappropriate to ask (and, if so, why)? Are there any grammar or vocabulary points they want to correct or change? Monitor and answer any questions the groups have, and make sure all the students in each group write down any questions they like.
• Ask your learners to sit or stand in two circles, one inner circle facing out and one outer circle facing in. If possible, try to ensure a mix of males and females in both circles, and that there is an even number in both circles (else two people can work together).
• Explain or elicit that the students will be asking their questions to each other (you may want to stress that first date questions are also great for getting to know people better!). Explain that they have 4 minutes to ask their questions to the person sitting closest to them in the other circle. Board “change!” and elicit that, after 4 minutes, those in the outer circle should move one place anti-clockwise, and can ask their questions to the next student, and so on.
• Start the activity, and note down any useful language for subsequent feedback.
• Stop the activity when you sense the students are getting a bit overwhelmed, and allow them to sit back down.
• Give some language feedback, perhaps as a gapfill or a dictation (again, see here for various ways of giving delayed error correction).
• Board: “speed dating”. Elicit this is what the students have just been simulating. Has anyone been speed dating? Would they like to try it? Why (not)?

Grammar dictation

• Make sure your students have a pen and some blank paper. Ask them to listen carefully and write down the words and numbers they will hear.
• Dictate the following: two colleagues, two or three encounters, a few glasses of wine, £20, her first, 20 days later, 36, six to 12 months.
• Say these come from a short article about speed dating from a British newspaper. Pairs: ask students to make a story to go with these numbers. Why might they be in the article? Ask a couple of students to share their ideas with the class.
• Read the text at a natural pace (but maybe pausing for longer than usual between paragraphs), asking students to listen for the numbers and make notes about them – what do they refer to? Was their story correct? When you’ve finished reading aloud, ask your students to compare their notes in pairs.
• Read the text again. Ask learners again to compare notes, this time in groups of four.
• In their groups, ask learners to reconstruct the text using their notes. Make yourself available to help with language or answer any questions.
• Display these reconstructed texts around the class, along with the original text. Which is closest to the original? Which is the most different? Which is the class’ favourite article?

Vocabulary-building and discussion tasks based on the text

• If you like, you could ask your students, perhaps working in pairs or small groups, to do the collocation-building/vocabulary matching task from page 2 of my worksheet (tasks A and B). The collocations are: a bit awkward; a long-term relationship; an immediate physical attraction; a speed-dating event; a whirlwind romance; they were nice enough [but...]; everyday life; felt a strong attraction [to ...]; the relationship blossomed.
• Alternatively, either ask each group to write three to five questions about speed-dating based on the article, or dictate these questions (which could be written in part C of the second page of the worksheet): do you think they will have a happy marriage? Do you think this could happen to you? Would you recommend speed-dating to a friend? What’s would be your perfect date – where would you go, who would you be with and what would you do?
• Ask your students to form new pairs. They ask each other the questions (their own, or the dictated ones above).

Follow-up

• Perhaps for homework, ask your learners to write a follow-up article about the speed-dating couple: It’s 10 years later. How have their lives changed? Are they still together? Do they have kids? Would they still recommend speed-dating to their friends?

Materials and preparation: these speed-dating questions, cut into the 4 sections; some blu-tack to stick them to your classroom walls; some blank paper (for you) and a pen.

Procedure:

Warmer and ice-breaker

• Board: blind, first, double. Elicit which word comes afterwards (date).
• Elicit the difference between a blind date and a double date (which means two couples together? Which means you haven’t met the other person before you go on a date with them? Is a double date always a first date? etc.)
• Ask your students to think back – have they ever been on a blind date or a double date? Ask them to think about the first date they ever went on (if you like, you can tell them a little about your first date, and invite some [not-too-embarrassingly-personal!] questions about it).
• Divide the students into AB pairs: ask them to tell each other about their first dates, and any blind or double dates they have been on. Occasionally, you might find someone who has never been on a date before (it happens!), in which case you could ask them to talk about their ideal first date (who would it be with? Where would they go? What would they do?).

Language feedback and preparation for the next task

• Whilst the students are talking, board a gapfill out of any useful expressions they use or could have used. Include these expressions in your gapfill (as they appear in the discussion questions later): a celebrity couple, be in a relationship with, love at first sight, online dating.
• If possible, divide your class into four groups. As tell each other about Bs, Bs tell each other about As. Allow a couple of minutes for this, during which time you can stick the discussion questions about dating in different places around the classroom walls.
• Draw your students’ attention to your boarded gapfill. Explain the expressions on the board are all ways of talking about dating and relationships. Ask the groups to decide together what the missing words are.
• If you like, turn this language feedback into a competition: explain that you will define a phrase; students who think they know the missing word call out “yes!”, and the first to say “yes” and complete the expression wins a point for their team.
• You could drill pronunciation after eliciting the missing words (focussing on connected speech, for example, or tricky phonemes).

Conversation and new language practice

• Point out the questions stuck to the classroom walls. Explain all the questions are about dating and relationships, and invite your students to use some of the boarded expressions in their answers. Ask the class, in their groups, to stand up and go together to one of the question sets. Make sure each group is standing in front of a different set of questions! Elicit that the questions are there to inspire conversation, and that each student is welcome to ask other questions that don’t appear.
• Monitor the students’ language as they talk, again noting down any useful expressions they (almost) use, or any grammar point several of them are struggling with. Once a group of learners have finished with one set of questions, they can go to another set and continue their discussion.

Listening focus and language feedback

• When the groups have finished, dictate 5 or 6 expressions you’ve noted down from the language-monitoring stage. Ask your learners to check these together (in pairs or groups of 4), then nominate different learners to read the expressions back to you. Board them and discuss their meaning (when would we use them? How informal are they? What grammatical patterns underpin them? etc.)

Follow-up

• Ask your learners to think of and write some questions they might ask someone on a first date. If you have time in class, ask the students to work together in their groups to think of and write good questions, while you monitor and help with question formation. If you set this task for homework, in the next class, divide your class into small groups and ask them to compare their questions, checking for appropriacy, grammar and vocabulary. Monitor and answer any questions the groups have. In either case, make sure all the students in a group write any questions they want to ask.
• Ask your learners to form new small groups, and ask each other their questions, and any others that come up. Again, monitor for language feedback (both what the students said, and what they could have said – I share some ideas about giving delayed correction here).

Note: this idea comes from the excellent Teaching Unplugged by Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury, which I’ve just noticed appears to have gone out of print. Bring it back! It’s ace! I’ve played with the idea a bit, adding a little more detail, and moving the language focus stage to the middle of the lesson, so learners can practice new words and expressions, and try out any new grammar structures.

Materials: some blank paper; 3 objects you have to hand which say something about your personality or lifestyle (a picture of your family on your mobile phone, a board pen, a packet of cigarettes…)

Preparation: none, apart perhaps from ensuring you have 3 objects you can talk about.

Procedure:

• Ask your students to search through their bags or pockets to find three things which say something about them (their personalities, their lifestyles, and so on). If you like, you can demonstrate what you mean by showing 3 objects of your own, saying why you’ve chosen them.
• In groups of 4, ask them to show each other these objects and briefly explain why they chose them.
• In pairs, learners use the objects as stimuli to write questions to ask the other pair in their group. Agree a time limit with your students for this writing stage (e.g., 5 minutes).
• The pairs swap questions, and check for grammar and vocab errors. They also put a cross next to any questions they don’t want to answer, or tick the questions they like the most.
• They swap back and discuss any language changes. Be available to answer their language questions, and be alert for any common errors to focus on in a follow-up lesson.
• They say any questions they don’t want to talk about.
• They ask each other the questions, using them as a springboard to conversation. Monitor learners’ language production, taking care to note both what your students said and alternative formulations. Make sure you have at least one sentence from each learner talking about their objects.
• As the groups near the end of their conversations, board some of your notes as a gapfill. Early finishers can discuss what words could go in the gaps while they wait for the others to finish talking.
• Point out that all the boarded sentences come from things said in the class. Invite learners to discuss in their groups who might have said what, then elicit their ideas.
• Elicit the missing words, touching on grammar points and drilling pronunciation (focussing on sentence stress, elision, …) as appropriate. Encourage your learners to note down any expressions they want to remember.
• Ask each group to make questions to ask people in other groups, based on the boarded sentences.
• Help your learners form new groups, and to take their questions with them. Tell them to ask and answer each others’ questions, this time trying to incorporate some of the boarded language into their work.

Note: This lesson is based quite closely on Mike J Harrison’s excellent Reverse Reading idea. I’ve just changed the context slightly and added a few ideas for possible follow-ups, so all credit should stay with Mike!

Materials: blank paper and pens; blu-tack if you intend to stick your students’ work around the walls. If you want to try one of the suggested follow-up ideas, your students should have access to graded readers or the internet.

Procedure:

• Start a discussion about books and films – what kinds do your students enjoy the most? Help your learners formulate and talk about their favourite genres (horror, romantic comedy, slapstick, thrillers, disaster movies, …), and write useful language to one side of the board, where it can stay for the lesson.
• Say you have some questions to dictate about a story you think they will enjoy.
• Dictate 5 open questions, perhaps with one or two based around a grammar item recently covered, or which you’d like your class to look at more closely. For example, with past perfect continuous:
  • How did John feel when he woke up?
  • What had he been doing the night before? Why?
  • How was he feeling on his way to work?
  • What unexpected thing happened on his journey?
  • What happened next?
• Ask your students to check their questions in pairs or groups of 3, then elicit and board the questions, discussing any confusions with the learners.
• Remind your students of the boarded film/book genres. Ask them to write their own, short answers to the questions you dictated, in a style of their choosing (sci-fi, fantasy, detective story…)
• In pairs or groups of 3, students compare their answers and decide on their favourite ones. They then write the story in their chosen genre, while you monitor and help with language.
• Display the stories on the board or around the classroom. Invite your learners to read the other stories – which is their favourite and why?
• Ask your learners to find more stories in their favourite genre for homework (they could look at some graded readers, or see the internet resources I’ve collected here, for instance)
• The following week, invite your learners to share the stories they encountered – which was their favourite? Which do they recommend other students read?
• Students could then make posters illustrating books and themes in their chosen genres, write short recommendations for other learners in the class, rate the books and write short reviews, or you could encourage them to bring their stories to class, and set aside a regular time for reading, sharing and discussing them.

Note: In 2010, the Boston Globe published an amazing and beautiful series of photographs of life in Russia 100 years ago, and I thought it would be great to be able to share some of the pictures with students in a lesson. Here’s one idea.

Levels: intermediate to advanced.
Ages: older teens and adults.
Type: using photos as stimuli to produce particular grammatical forms; text reconstruction.
Skills: speaking; listening; reading; writing.
Language focus: past passives; vocabulary to describe some scenes represented in photos.

Materials:

If you don’t have access to a laptop or IWB, you’ll probably need:
• Colour copies of the first page of this worksheet for half the students in your class
• Colour copies of the second page for the other half
• Colour copies of the third page for each group of four students in your class
• copies of the text on the fourth page for each student
• Blank paper for each student to draw a picture on

…On the other hand, if you do have a laptop or IWB, you’ll need:

• One copy of the photos from this handout ready to be screened
• Enough copies of the text on page four of the handout for each of your students
• Blank paper for each student to draw a picture on

Preparation: prepare the copies as above. Note: If you have an IWB or laptop, you could forego making copies in this way – in the second activity, below, ask Bs to turn away so they can’t see the screen, then ask As to describe one of the two pictures to their partner, while B draws what they hear. In the third activity, students could look at the colour pictures on the screen while discussing answers to the questions in pairs.

Procedure:

Warmer 1 – guided visualisation

• Ask your students to close their eyes and imagine they’re on the best holiday of their lives. Speaking in a fairly slow, clear and relaxed manner, ask them to think about where they are on this holiday. Ask them to look around their imaginary place (keeping their eyes closed!) – what can they see? After a few seconds, ask them what they can hear; and then – can they hear any conversations? Tell them to try and listen in, if so – can they tell what the people are saying? And then: what can they smell? Does it remind them of anything? Are they eating or drinking anything? If so, what is it? What does it taste like, or feel like inside? Are they lying down, or sitting, or standing up? A few seconds after this last question, ask your students gently to open their eyes, and tell the person next to them where they were.
• Nominate a couple of different students to tell you where they were on this holiday. Encourage other students in your class to ask for more information if they don’t have a clear picture of the scene in their minds. Board any useful language and elicit corrections. (Note: after boarding the language, it can be useful to focus quickly on pronunciation – and encourage your students to note down any vocabulary they want to remember).



Warmer 2 – describing scenes from pictures

(Note: I’d use both of these warm-up activities, as one leads into the other, and the first generates useful language which your students could use in the second; however, if you don’t have time for both warmers, I’d say this one will be the most useful).

• Explain that you have two pictures, which you’d like your students to describe to each other in pairs. Divide your class into A/B pairs and, if possible, ask them to move so they are back-to-back, each with a folder or other writing surface in front of them, and a pen. Otherwise, ask them to make sure their partner can’t see what they’re doing.
• Hand out a piece of blank paper to all your students, as well as the first page of the handout to As, and the second page to Bs. Make sure they don’t show each other their pictures.
• Ask your students who thinks they are the best (or the worst) artist. Draw attention to the empty paper in front of them, elicit that they have a different picture from their partner, and ask them what they think you might ask them to do. Get a couple of ideas, then explain you’ll ask As to describe their picture, while Bs draw it; then, after a few minutes, you’ll ask them to swap round, so B describes while A draws. Elicit that they must keep their drawings secret from their partner, as well as their pictures, and that it doesn’t matter if they’re no good at drawing – in fact, the worse the picture, the more interesting it might be to look at!
• If you used the first warmer, above, point out the useful language on the board which your students can use. Allow your students a minute or so to think about how they will describe their pictures, then set a time limit for As to describe and Bs to draw (say, four minutes) and start the activity.
• After a few minutes, ask As and Bs to swap roles, making sure they keep their pictures and drawings secret for now. Elicit the time limit from your students.
• After four minutes or so, ask your students to show each other their drawings and pictures. Normally, this generates a little laughter and discussion…
• If you like (and if you’ve time), ask your students what was the most difficult thing about describing or drawing their pictures, and what was not so hard. You could elicit and board a few ways they can improve on what they found most difficult to do, and encourage them by focussing briefly on what they found easier to accomplish.



Discussing the other pictures; listening comprehension

• Explain that you have five more pictures taken by the same photographer, and that you have five questions you’d like your students to answer about them. Dictate the following, and ask your students to write down what they hear:
  1. When do you think these pictures were taken?
  2. Who is in them?
  3. Where are they?
  4. Who do you think took the pictures?
  5. Why were these pictures taken?
• In pairs, ask your students to compare what they wrote, then elicit and board the questions, eliciting corrections as necessary.
• Divide your students into new groups of four and hand out the third page of the worksheet (which has five images on it). Ask your students to discuss the boarded questions in their groups. You may want to explain that this is a chance for them to practise their conversational skills, and that “I don’t know” is banned!
• After a few minutes, explain that you have a short article about these photos. Tell your students that you’re going to read the text aloud, and ask them to listen and try to answer those five questions on the board.
• Read the text from page four of the handout in a natural voice, then ask your students to check their answers in pairs. If necessary, re-pair the students and ask them to check again. If time, read the article again, and again ask your students to check their answers together.
• Distribute page four of the worksheet to your students (there should be enough for one each). Ask them to underline any unknown vocabulary and try to guess the meaning from the context. They can then check with their partners, and any remaining problems can be checked either with a dictionary (if they have one to hand) or by asking you.



Text reconstruction; grammar focus

• Take the text back from your students (if they’ve made notes on their copy, ask them to write their names at the top, so it won’t get mixed up). With their partners, ask your students to try to reconstruct what they read, using their answers to the boarded questions (and the boarded questions themselves) to help. You can circulate and help with language as your students do this.
• After a few minutes, go to the board and ask the whole class to help you write the text. Nominate different students to call out sentences, or parts or sentences, and elicit changes or corrections from the class. Board what your students write, and engage them in discussion of any grammatical or vocabulary issues as they arise. It doesn’t matter if the language or the order of information is different from the text; all that matters is that the class-generated text is written in a logical order, that it answers the five questions above, and that it’s written in appropriate and grammatically correct English.
• Once the class-generated text is complete, hand back the text from page four of the worksheet. Ask your students to look through it – were there any details they missed? What are the main differences in vocabulary and grammar?



Focus on past passives

(Note: although the text lends itself to work on past passive forms, it would be equally useful for eliciting past perfect forms and meanings – or how articles are used, and so on. The focus below is really just an example of what you can do with the language of the text – you might want to try something else, like a DIY gapfill task, instead.)

• Ask your students to find and underline the passives used either in the class-generated text or the original version (in the version on the handout, we have The photos… were taken by, He had been asked to…, Three… images were taken…). Elicit the passive form ([form of 'be'] + past participle) and board this in a new column. Ask your students if the passive sentences are about events in the past, present or future (they’re about the past), and which happened first (in the original text, the photographer was asked to record life in the Russian Empire) – elicit how the past perfect signifies an earlier past. Ask your students why the passive is being used in these instances (the subject isn’t so important), and if they know any other times when we might want to use a passive form, and ask them for example sentences illustrating these other occasions (when we don’t know the subject of the verb – e.g., “a man has been shot” – or when the subject is obvious – for example, the headline, “Thief arrested” – obviously by the police…). Ask them to look back at the questions they wrote – can they find examples of passive questions? (Questions one and five are passive) Ask them how we can make passive questions, and whether there is only one possible word order for making them (no – in the questions, we see “[noun] + were + past participle” and “were + [noun] + past participle” respectively). Ask your students to listen as you change the questions around: When were the pictures taken? and Why do you think they were taken?. Do the questions still sound OK? (Hopefully, yes).

Personalised practice using past passives

• If your students have a mobile phone, a purse or wallet with a personal photo they’re happy to share with the class, ask them to prepare to show these. If not, ask them to close their eyes and imagine a very special moment in their lives which they’re happy to share with the class.
• In pairs, ask your students to describe their photos or imagined scenes to their partners, using past passive forms if possible in their descriptions.
• Circulate and note down language for subsequent feedback (a good way to do this might be to turn the sentences you note into a boarded gapfill). If your students aren’t producing any past passives, don’t worry – note down a few occasions when these could have been used, and board or elicit these in the feedback.

Note: the song and lesson ideas below would fit in well with travel- or emigration-related vocabulary and lesson themes; or, of course, they could be used on their own.

Materials:

• This worksheet (3 pages)
• this song (you might want to use keepvid or savevid to download it to your computer):
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• you may want to print out the notes below, too (don’t worry, all lesson plans and ideas here are printer-friendly!).

Preparation:

• make one copy of the complete worksheet (pages one, two and three) for yourself;
• copy pages one and two for each of your students.

Procedure:

Ideas for warmers

Option 1

• Dictate the following questions (or use some of the ones from the “travel” section of my topic-based materials) – you may need to say them more than once:
  1. Describe the place where you grew up. What was it like? What was the best thing about it?
  2. Have you moved house before? If so, how did you feel when you moved? If not, what would make you move home?
  3. Where would you most like to live in the world, and why?
• Pair your students and ask them to check what they wrote. Elicit the questions and board any which caused difficulty. Drill pronunciation as necessary.
• Ask your students to answer the questions in their pairs. Elicit that they can ask questions you haven’t asked, to get more information. You may like to monitor your students’ output here, noting down language for subsequent feedback.
• Stop the activity after a few minutes and get some content feedback from your learners – for example: is there a consensus on the best place to move to? What are some of your students’ favourite memories of (their first) home? How do they feel about where they’re living now?

Option 2

• Draw a rough map of the USA on the board and invite your students to guess what it is.
• Elicit approximately where New York and Chicago would go on this map. Elicit roughly where Kentucky or North or South Carolina would go (further South!).
• Ask your students to imagine they come from a farm in a Southern US state. They’ve just moved to a big city up North. How do they feel about their new home? How do they feel about their old home now? What are the main differences between their new and old lives?
• Allow your students to think about this for a little while, and make some notes about it. Then pair them up, or put them into small groups, and ask them to discuss their ideas. While they discuss, board the following table:
  

  City life	Country life

• Get some content feedback from your students, helping them reformulate any grammatical or vocabulary errors and boarding their (corrected) answers in your table. Ask your students to note down any words or expressions from the table which they want to remember.



Working with the song

• Board “Southbound”. Explain that this describes a journey, and elicit which direction you’re travelling if you’re going southbound (South!). Explain that you have a song you’d like your class to listen to – it’s called Southbound and it’s about a man travelling back to his childhood home in the southern United States. If you like, you could ask your students if they think the man will be happy to be going back home and why/why not. They could invent a back story for him, too: why is he going back home? What’s he been doing up north?
• Divide your students into pairs and show them page one of the worksheet (the lyrics with 10 mistakes). Explain that these are the song’s lyrics, but that there are ten mistakes. Ask them to read through the lyrics and work together to try and change any words that seem wrong or strange.
• Hand out page one of the worksheet, one copy per pair of students. After a few minutes, ask them to listen to the song and see if they were correct. Give out more copies of page one of the worksheet, so your students each have a copy. Elicit that they can make any further changes as they listen, then play the song below:
  

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• Play the song again if necessary, then hand out the second page of the worksheet. Ask your students to check the real lyrics against their own corrections – any surprises? Which parts of the song were hardest to understand? Check and drill pronunciation of any difficult passages for your students. You could also check unknown vocabulary here, or play the song again while students read along (or sing along with it).
• Focus your students’ attention on the comprehension questions. Ask them to read the lyrics and try to answer the questions, discussing with their partners what the answers might be and why these might be the answers. Encourage your students to justify their answers – you might want to demonstrate the first question with a stronger student.
• Get feedback from the class (see the third page of the handout for my suggested answers).



Some possible follow-ups

Follow-up 1 – updating the lyrics

• Board:
  

  Place
  From:	To:
  Reason for moving:

• Put your students into new pairs or small groups. Focus on what you’ve just boarded and ask each pair or group to decide together on answers to these prompts.
• Ask them to choose a musical style they all like, and to write their own “journey” song describing how they’re feeling as they move from one place to another.
• Circulate and help with language as necessary.
• Students could either finish this for homework, pin their lyrics on the classroom walls for other groups to read and suggest corrections to or write questions for more information, or they could even record a song to accompany their lyrics (these could be worked on in class as part of a longer project, or added to a class blog, etc.)

Follow-up 2 – writing a letter or an email home

• Board Place: from; to;, and Reason for moving:, as above, put your students into new pairs or new groups and ask them to choose answers to the boarded prompts.
• Explain that they will write a group letter or email to someone close to them (they can choose who this is), saying where they’re moving to and why. Elicit that the letter/email will be informal and personal, and elicit (and board) a few ways of beginning and ending such correspondence.
• Circulate and help with language.
• For homework, students could each take a photocopy of a letter or email from a different group and reply to it.

Follow-up 3 – working more with the language of the lyrics

• Focus your students’ attention on a couple of the internal rhymes in the lyrics – for example: homesick/seem to pick; street/feet. Ask them to find some more examples, either of internal rhymes or rhymes at line-endings.
• Focus on the image of the moving train. Ask how the internal (and other) rhymes help to capture this rhythm, and how successful they are at doing this.
• Focus on some of the informalities of the language, such as cos (for because) and burnin’ (with no final g). Ask your students what other words or expressions they can find which show the song is not very formal (some ideas: counting sheep; ain’t got a dime; big old engine; …).
• Board some of these informal words and expressions, then set the groundwork for a new story (you could ask, and accept the first serious answers to, these questions: how many people are in the story? Do they know each other? If so, how? If not, how do they meet? How old are they?, and so on – by asking fairly closed questions in this way, and not allowing pauses before answers, you’ll quickly be able to build up a story framework with your students).
• Ask your students to write this story, either as a narrative, a song, a poem, a letter or an email. Ask them to incorporate all of the boarded informal language in what they write.
• Monitor and help with language, and suggest ideas (perhaps using the closed questions technique above), as necessary. Stories could be finished for homework, pinned around the room for corrections or questions from the other groups, etc.

I’ve updated the ELT News Feed section of this blog to make it easier for people to find their way around. It’s now divided into four sections which I hope will really help teachers who want to build on their existing skills and find new lesson ideas for their students: Lesson Ideas, Teacher Development, Audio and Video, and Sources. I’ve also added a silly logo (below – hope you like it!).

The inspiration for these changes (apart from the logo) – and for starting a news feed of links to ELT-related posts and ideas in the first place – comes from philosopher Denis Dutton’s artsandlettersdaily.com website, which is an excellent compendium of links to various humanities- and social sciences-based online articles.

Further to my recent post about staging class debates, I’ve just uploaded two more to the topic-based materials section of this blog: one (on whether some art can be better than other art) here; the other (on whether private schools should be abolished) here. You can read some ideas about how to use them, and about ways of holding debates more generally, here.

The debate about abolishing private schools

I highly recommend introducing debates to interested classes of adults or teens of about intermediate level and upwards: they’re great for generating discussion; students can practise using a lot of functional language about expressing opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, and so on; and they can provide useful vocab-building preparatory homework opportunities as well!

Please remember to check the language used in my debating sheets and consider whether to pre-teach any of the vocabulary used. I’ve tried to use language relevant to the topic being discussed, and otherwise to simplify the text with VocabProfile, but some of it will still be complex, as it’s condensed.

I’ll be adding more debates over the next few days, and hope to update (and add to) those topic-based materials more widely, too.

The debate about the value of art

I’ve read quite a bit about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) being debated later today in the US House of Representatives, as well as about its sister, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). To my mind, the internet is by far the largest and most globally important bastion of free speech and free expression, and it is vitally important for all of us that we protect this freedom.

As they are currently worded, SOPA and PIPA are far too wide-ranging in their scope. Not only would websites hosting pirated films, books and music be censored, but so would any which link to them, and anyone who used any of this vast network of sites for whatever purpose, including language teaching, would be adversely affected, regardless of “fair use” clauses under the education provisions of existing copyright laws. US-based search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, would be prevented from linking to sites deemed unsuitable under these proposed Acts, and it would therefore also become very difficult to locate any proxy, privacy or anonymising software online (imagine an event like the Arab Spring happening under these conditions – we would not hear of it, as those fighting for change would have to reveal their identities in order to communicate with us, thereby endangering themselves and their families). Likewise, all social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and so on, would face the perhaps impossible task of checking all third-party links and uploads for possible US copyright infringements, as would all other websites visible in the United States. The provisions of SOPA and PIPA could result in the end of many websites smaller than the social media Goliaths, as they would not have the resources to devote to their successful policing. SOPA and PIPA would also cripple innovation online: as a recent study shows, many venture capitalists will not invest in new internet businesses if SOPA and PIPA become US law without being radically changed.

Both SOPA and PIPA also promise immunity from prosecution to all internet service providers (ISPs) which voluntarily block websites they believe may violate US copyright laws. The standard for immunity is very low: the providers must simply “act in good faith” based on “credible evidence”. This leaves the proposed Acts open to massive abuse, and ISPs under pressure to block sites at the request of private companies and individuals, or face a court order against them; and so we face the prospect of an internet censored by largely unaccountable and anonymous corporate entities.

Because I believe these proposed laws are so flawed, and because their passing into law would affect the internet not only in the USA, but around the world, I have decided to join the website blackout today in protest. Please note that the main page of this site will “go dark” from around 8am Eastern Standard Time today until about 8pm this evening. You will still be able to visit the jobs page by bookmarking or following this link: http://efl-resource.com/tefljobs

You can find out how to join the strike, learn more about the two Acts and their ramifications, or sign US or international petitions against them, by clicking here.

Thanks for reading,

Simon