Level Two: Unit 5

Going Places

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.

Word associations

Ready to go?

Question and answer

Arguing the pros and cons

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Word associations

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 8, "Grammar Focus: Modals for necessity and suggestion."

Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity extends and recycles students' vocabulary, with a focus on nouns. (Note: This activity could be adapted to any unit and the focus changed to adjectives, verbs, phrases, and so on.)

Preparation: Choose some nouns from this unit, or a previous one, with which students can readily make some associations.

Explain the activity: You will call out a noun, and students have to quickly say words that they associate with it.
Model the activity by seeing how many words students can think of that relate to a common topic, such as pets. For example:

Teacher: Pets.
Student 1: Dogs.
Student 2: Birds.
Student 3: Birdcages.
Student 4: Aquariums.
Divide the class into groups. Tell each group to choose a secretary, who also gets to take turns giving word associations during the activity. Now call out one word. Each secretary writes it down and then continues to add each word that his or her group comes up with. Set a time limit of about three minutes.
Call on groups to read out their words. The group with the greatest number of word associations is the winner.

Ready to go?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 9, "Pronunciation: ought to and have to ."

Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity extends students' vocabulary related to the topic of travel.

Explain the activity: Students work in pairs and think about the types of personal items that they would need to take on a trip, i.e., anything apart from clothing.
Write the following structures on the board and tell students to use them during their discussion:

We'd better take . . . We have to pack . . .

We ought to buy . . . We must take . . .

We should get . . . We need to buy . . .
Now pairs discuss and write down the things they need to take on a trip (e.g., toothpaste, film, batteries, tissues). Set a time limit of five minutes.
Two pairs form a group and compare their lists.

Question and answer

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 10, "Dream Vacation."

Time: 10 minutes. This activity practices asking questions about world geography or about students' own countries; it also reviews comparative and superlative adjectives. This type of activity could be easily adapted for any unit's grammar and vocabulary.

Preparation: Make a set of Wh-questions on cards; write one question on each card. Then make a corresponding set of answer cards; write the answer to each question on a separate card – for example:

Question cards

Answer cards

Make enough question and answer cards so that half of the students have one question card each and the other half have one answer card each. (Note: In a small class, you may want to give more than one question or answer card to each student.) The questions should be about local geography, your country, or the world, and they should be relatively easy for students to answer.

In class, mix up both sets of cards and hand one card (either a question or an answer card) to each student.
Explain the task: Students move around the class and try to match their questions and answers. To do this, they can read their questions and answers aloud, like this:

Student 1: What's your question?
Student 2: (reads his or her question aloud)
Student 1: No, my answer doesn't match. (or) Yes. That matches my answer (reads answer aloud)!
Set a time limit of five minutes. When two students find a question and an answer that match, they sit down.
Check answers by having students read their questions and answers aloud to the rest of the class.

Arguing the pros and cons

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Getting more for less when you travel."

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.