Level Two: Unit 15

What Would You Do?

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.

How much did you find out?

Consequences

That's my choice!

Verb contest

How can you say that?

Game – Tic-Tac-Toe

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How much did you find out?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 4, "Listening."

Time: about 20 minutes of class time. This activity reviews asking questions and describing customary events. It gives students the opportunity to find out more about the customs in an English-speaking country and to compare them with similar customs in their own countries.

Either choose one special holiday, festival, event, or custom (e.g., Christmas) for this activity or ask students to suggest one.
Write a set of questions about the event or custom on the board. Students should copy these questions and include additional questions of their own. For example, here are some questions about Christmas:

Do you celebrate Christmas?
How do you celebrate it? What do you do?
Do you give presents to people at Christmas?
Do you have a special dinner on Christmas Day?
Do you have Christmas parties?
Is Christmas a legal holiday in your country?
Is it your favorite holiday? Why or why not?
Now students should try to find a native English speaker and interview him or her by asking the questions prepared. Encourage students to say something like the following when they approach possible interviewees:

"Excuse me. Where are you from? Do you have a few minutes to help me with a short questionnaire on the topic of Christmas?"
Alternatively, students could go to the library and get the information from a book, a magazine, or an encyclopedia. Also, students who have access to the Internet and the World Wide Web could get information from a "chat room" or from on-line services and web sites.
In class, students take turns sharing their information with the class. How much information did they find out? Who found out the most? Who actually interviewed someone in English? Encourage students to ask follow-up questions to find out about one another's research experiences during this task.

Consequences

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 5, "Predicaments."

Time: 15–20 minutes. This activity practices describing consequences using if clauses with would or might.

Explain the activity: Students work in groups and must try to think of as many consequences as they can for two different situations (see 1 and 2 below, which you will give to the class later). To model the task, write the following example discussion on the board:

A: What would you do if you saw a burglar break into your neighbor's home?
B: I'd call the police.
C: What would happen if the police came?
D: If the police came, they would go into the home.

Continue the dialog by eliciting students' ideas, like this:

Teacher: What would the burglar do if the police went into the neighbor's home?
Student 1: The burglar might try to escape.
Teacher: And what would the police do if the burglar tried to escape?
Student 2: They would run after the burglar and . . . .
Now write these two questions on the board for each group to discuss:

1. What would you do if you urgently needed $1,000?
2. What would you do if you started receiving strange phone calls 24 hours a day?
Set a time limit of ten minutes. In their groups, students take turns to keep the discussion going (i.e., five minutes on each question) in a question-and-response type dialog, which they also must write down. Go around and give help as needed.
Then groups read their dialogs to the class.

That's my choice!

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 6, "Word Power: Antonyms."

Time: 25–30 minutes. This fun activity practices talking about hypothetical events using if clauses with would. Here, students choose an imaginary situation involving a famous person and describe what they would do in that situation.

Write these situations (or others of your own) on the board and ask students to choose one:

What would you do if you met . . . ?
Then have students name the famous person they'd like to meet, like this: "I'd like to meet . . . ."
Tell students to work individually, or in pairs, to think of five questions they would like to ask that person. Then students report their information to the class, like this:

Student: If I could meet a famous writer, I'd choose Shakespeare. Here are some questions I'd like to ask him:
Encourage the rest of the class to ask questions to get more information.

Verb contest

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 8, "Grammar Focus: Past Modals."

Time: 15 minutes. This activity provides an opportunity for students to review the spelling of verb forms – here, the simple past and the past participle. This contest can easily be conducted with another focus (e.g., singular and plural nouns; comparative forms of adjectives).

Preparation: Make a list of verbs for the contest. Choose verbs from the current unit and from previous units, focusing on verbs that have irregular forms (see the appendix at the back of the Student's Book for a handy list of irregular verbs). You will need the same number of verbs for each group of students (e.g., 5 groups 5 words = 25 words total needed).

Suggested verb list:

build	eat	keep	run	stand
buy	get	leave	see	take
catch	go	make	sell	teach
come	grow	meet	sit	wear
do	have	pay	speak	write

Books closed. Divide the class into groups and assign them letters (e.g., Group A, Group B). Then choose a verb from your list and ask Group A how to say and spell the simple past and past participle. Give the group a few seconds to discuss how each verb is spelled. (Note: Make sure that each student in a group gets a turn to spell a word aloud.) If both forms are correct, the group gets two points; if only one is correct, the group gets one point and the next group gets a chance for a point. If both forms are incorrect, spell the words correctly for the class and go on to the next group and the next word. For example:

Teacher: OK, Group A starts. Here's the first verb: build. What's the past tense of build?
Student 1: Built. B-U-I-L-T.
Teacher: Correct. That's one point. Now what's the past participle?
Student 2: Built. B-U-I-L-T.
Teacher: Correct. Two points. Now Group B . . . .
Continue in this way until you have used all the verbs in the list and each group has had the same number of turns. The winner is the group with the most points.

How can you say that?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Ask Alice."

Time: 10 minutes. This activity works well if students have sufficient information and/or strong feelings about two different cities that are "rivals" or that are often compared (e.g., New York and Los Angeles; Tokyo and Osaka). It also practices making evaluations and comparisons with adjectives and nouns (see Unit 3, Exercise 3). (Note: This activity could be used in any unit with topics that easily lend themselves to students' having opposing views.)

Explain the activity: Groups compare two cities by making statements about why one is better or worse than the other. Then find out which two cities are the ones that two or more groups want to compare; label the cities City #1 and City #2.
Form one group of students who thinks City #1 is better than City #2. Then form another group that thinks City #2 is better than City #1.
Model with the two groups how to begin, like this: One student from Group A begins by making a statement that explains why City #1 (here, New York) is better than City #2 (here, Los Angeles). Then a student from Group B responds, and students from both groups take turns responding to one another's opinions by giving their own opinions and reasons. For example:

Group A, Student 1: New York is a much nicer place to live than Los Angeles because . . . .

Group B, Student 1: Oh, I don't agree. New York is too crowded and dirty. L.A. is better because . . . .

Group A, Student 2: But L.A. always has too many traffic jams on its freeways, and . . . .

Group B, Student 2: Well, I think New Yorkers are very unfriendly, but people in Los Angeles are . . . .
If there is no real dissent between students in opposite groups, tell them to pretend they are in a debate – where students have to take a position even if they don't really believe in what they are arguing for or against.

Game – Tic-Tac-Toe

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Ask Alice."

Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity practices forming questions and statements. It can be adapted for use with any unit's grammar or vocabulary.

Draw a grid with nine squares on the board (i.e., three rows by three columns). Ask students to call out verbs (e.g., write, find, connect) and write them on the board.
Divide the class into two teams – Team X and Team O. Team X starts by choosing a verb and making either a statement or a question with it. If it is wrong, Team O gets a chance to use the same word in a statement or question. If Team O makes a correct sentence, write an O on the grid. Then it's Team O's turn. The game continues until one team gets tic-tac-toe (i.e., three Xs or Os together in a row, in a column, or diagonally through the grid).