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Learning to Learn
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.
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A great commercial!
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 4, "Grammar Focus: Would rather and would prefer."
Time: 20 minutes. In this activity, students write commercials for different types of schools.
- Explain the task: Students work in groups to write a persuasive 30-second commercial for radio or TV.
- Students form groups and think of a school to write a commercial for; then they plan their 30-second commercial for radio (audio only) or TV (audio and video). Set a time limit of about ten minutes. Walk around and give help as needed.
- Groups take turns presenting their commercials to the class. Who had the most interesting/the funniest one?
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Verb contest
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 8, "Grammar Focus: By + gerund for manner."
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 (e.g., 5 groups x 5 verbs = 25 verbs).
- Books closed. Divide the class into groups and assign them letters (Group A, Group B, etc.). 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. If both forms are correct, the group gets two points; if only one is correct, the group gets only 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 verb.
- Continue the contest until you have used all the verbs on your list and all the groups have had the same number of turns. The winner is the group with the most points.
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Would you rather be a cat or a dog?
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Writing."
Time: 10–15 minutes. This is a lighthearted activity that practices asking and responding to some fun and unusual questions of choice.
- Divide the class into pairs. Explain that each pair will write down six questions using the structures with would rather and would prefer from Exercise 4 on page 47. Tell students that the task here is to write humorous and unusual questions like these:
Would you rather be a/an . . . or a/an . . . ?
Would you prefer being/to be . . . or . . . ?
– a cat or a dog
– a car or a motorcycle
– a doctor or a chef
– an artist or a sailor
- Pairs work together to do the task. Set a time limit of about four minutes for this part.
- Now two pairs form a group and take turns asking and answering one another's questions. Explain that students should try to respond by giving a reason with because (e.g., "I'd rather be a cat because someone would feed me and I could sleep most of the day."). Allow about ten minutes for this. Walk around and give help as needed.
- Optional: Groups tell the class about some of their more interesting questions and the reasons that they heard.
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Word associations
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Learning styles."
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 from 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 languages. For example:
Teacher: Languages.
Student 1: English.
Student 2: Japanese.
Student 3: Vocabulary.
Student 4: Hard.
Student 5: Memorizing.
- 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 largest number of word associations is the winner.
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