Level Two: Unit 2

Caught in the Rush

The activities below provide fun exercises for the entire class when you have extra time. They are designed to be taught with specific exercises in this unit. Click on an activity in the list below or scroll down the page.

Arguing the pros and cons

Chain story – Visiting a foreign country

Could you tell me . . . ?

Scrambled letters

What do we have in common?

That's not right!

Go to the Resources Page for This Unit

Arguing the pros and cons

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 5, "You Be the Judge."

Time: about 45 minutes. Besides providing a stimulating use of language, a class debate also offers an intellectually challenging activity. (Note: This debate was designed to be used in Unit 2 after part B of Exercise 5 – if two groups had different ratings about the same city's transportation services. However, almost any topic in any unit can be turned into a statement or question for the class to debate.)

First, decide on a good debate topic or question (e.g., "Parking in this city still needs to be greatly improved." or "Is our city's bus system much better now than ten years ago?").
Ask for volunteers to form two debate teams of four to six students each – one for the "pro," or affirmative, side and the other for the "con," or negative, side. Allow the teams between ten and fifteen minutes to prepare their statements, while the rest of the class works in pairs or groups to discuss both sides of the debate topic. Alternatively, to save class time, ask the debate teams to prepare their arguments for homework.
Then hold a 30-minute debate, with the teams taking turns in front of the class to present their arguments. When time is up, poll the rest of the class to find out which team presented the best arguments. The team with the most votes wins the debate.

Chain story – Visiting a foreign country

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Tourists."

Time: 10 minutes. This activity practices narrating a story in the past.

Explain the task: Students tell a story about visiting a foreign country. One student gives the first sentence of the story. The next student repeats that sentence and adds another sentence. Model the task with several students , like this:

Teacher: I went to France.
Student 1: I went to France, and I stayed in Paris.
Student 2: I went to France, and I stayed in Paris, but it was very expensive there.
Student 3: I went to France, and I stayed in Paris, but it was very expensive there. However, I bought a nice . . . .
Have students form groups. Students take turns adding sentences until the story comes to an interesting end.

Could you tell me . . . ?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Tourists."

Time: 5–10 minutes. This is a fun activity in which students challenge one another to form indirect questions. (Note: This activity could also be used to review other types of grammar points.)

Explain the activity: Students challenge one another in a contest by forming Wh-questions and then changing them into indirect questions.
Divide the class into two teams – A and B. The first student on Team A starts by asking a Wh-question (e.g., "Where is the library?" "How late does the subway run?"). Then the first student on Team B transforms it into an indirect question (e.g., "Could you tell me where the library is?" "Do you know how late the subway runs?"). If it is correct, Team B gets one point; if it isn't correct, the next person on Team A gets a chance to make the point. Then another member of Team B asks the next Wh-question.
The game continues until every student has had at least one turn to make a point. The team with the most points is the winner.

Scrambled letters

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Tourists."

Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity can be used with any unit for a fun vocabulary review and spelling exercise.

Preparation: Near the end of a cycle, choose ten words and scramble the letters of each one. Use the Unit Summaries in the back of the Student's Book to help you. If possible, choose words that are related to one another in some way (e.g., words for things found in a city in Unit 2; words for foods in Unit 4; all nouns).

In class, write the ten scrambled words on the board. To make the task easier, give students the first letter – for example:

t e r e s t (s ____________________ )

b y s a u w (s ____________________ )

(Answers: street; subway)
Pairs arrange the letters to find the words. Check students' answers.

What do we have in common?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Stuck in an Airport? What to Do?"

Time: 10–15 minutes. This fun activity gives students a chance to get to know one another better. It also practices discussing various topics from the unit and then writing sentences to summarize things that students have in common.

Explain the activity: Students work in pairs and try for five minutes to find out how many things they have in common with each other. They must write one sentence for each thing they find in common.
First, ask the class to look through the unit and find some general topics and ideas that they might talk about during the activity. Write their suggestions on the board, like this:

transportation coffee taxis

traffic problems parking police officers

duty-free shops things that bother you airports

cash machines department stores
Write the following phrases on the board for students to use during their discussion; elicit additional ones and add them to the board:

We're both . . . . She/He and I both . . . .

Neither of us can stand . . . . We both really like . . . .

We've both seen . . . . Neither of us wants . . . .
Model the activity with a volunteer:

Teacher: What do we have in common? Hmm . . . OK, I'll start. Have you ever been on a ferry?
Student: No, I haven't. But have you ever been on a sailboat?
Teacher: Yes, I have. So that's one thing we have in common.
Let's write that down. (Both teacher and student write on separate pieces of paper We've both been on a sailboat.)
Student: OK. It's my turn. Would you like to buy a sports car?
Teacher: Yes, I'd like to buy a Miata. How about you?
Student: Well, I'd rather get an old Corvette.
Teacher: So we could write We both would like a sports car, but I want a Miata and you want a Corvette.
Students form pairs. Set a time limit of five minutes. Pairs do the activity. Remind students to write down their sentences. Go around the class and give help as needed.
When time is up, find out which pair wrote the most sentences. That pair shares with the rest of the class the five most interesting things they found in common. Then call on the pair who wrote the second highest number of sentences and have them do the same. Continue in this way for as long as there are pairs and time left.

That's not right!

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Stuck in an Airport? What to Do?"

Time: 15 minutes. This is a world-knowledge quiz.

Explain the task: In pairs, students think of a country and write down six statements about it – five true and one false. These should be factual statements, not opinions (e.g., I think X is more beautiful than Y.). Write these example sentences on the board:

The Netherlands is a small country. It's in northern Europe. It's also known as Holland. The people speak French. The capital city is Amsterdam. There are a lot of windmills in the Netherlands.

(Answer: The false statement here is "The people speak French." Correction: Dutch.)
Students work in pairs to do the activity.
Now groups of four (two pairs each) get together. The members of one pair take turns reading their statements aloud. The other pair tries to identify the false statement and to correct the false information in it.