Lesson Summary

Aims

- To Practise greetings, introductions and giving personal information

Main activities

- Small group discussion

- Listening comprehension

- Listening for specific words

- Write personal descriptions

- Role play

Lesson Plan

The following lesson plan is based on Big City Small World Episode 1.

Introduction

Explain to students that they are going to be listening to a soap opera about a group of friends who meet in a café in London. The friends are from different parts of the world. They have gone to London to work or study.

Pre-listening - discussion

Write the following questions on the board and ask students to discuss them in small groups.

Have you got any friends or family members living in a different country?
How / How often do you keep in touch?
Have you ever travelled to another country? (Where? What was it like?)
If you went to live in London what would you miss about your home?

Listening - comprehension

Tell students they are going to listen to the first episode of Big City Small World. Tell them that you want them to answer two questions:

1 Where is Sarah from? (Shanghai)
2 What does Olivia order to drink? (tea)

Play the recording and check students’ answers.

Tell students they are going to listen again and answer some comprehension questions. Stronger classes can do the two comprehension exercises. Weaker classes could do either one or two. Get students to read the questions before they listen. Explain the meaning of any unknown words or phrases.

Listening - vocabulary

Tell students they are going to listen again and focus on vocabulary. Get students to read the questions in Vocabulary 1 before they listen. Explain the meaning of any unknown words or phrases. 

For weaker classes copy Vocabulary 2 (someone or anyone) on the board and elicit the missing words from the students. Stronger classes can do the exercise individually.

Listening - grammar

Get students to do Grammar 1. This exercise can be done in pairs and students can discuss each question. When students have finished you can provide the answers or they could listen again with the audioscript and correct their own answers.

Post-listening - map

Put students into small groups. Give each student a copy of Photocopiable 1A - map (please refer to Downloads). Ask them to label as many countries as they can. Explain that they are going to be filling in details on this handout as they listen to further episodes of Big City Small World.
Students should be able to fill in the names for Shanghai and Hong Kong (Sarah, Johnny).

Post-listening - speaking practice

Explain that students are going to act out a scenario. They each have a role card (Photocopiable 1B - please refer to Downloads) with information about who they are. They are at a party and meet for the first time. Write “party” on the board. Elicit a few phrases and introductions and write them (Hello, I’m John and I’m from New York, pleased to meet you, how long have you been in London?, etc.)

Put students into groups of six and give each group a set of role cards. Students read their cards and act out their roles. Explain that they can invent any other information. (Smaller classes can work in groups of three or four).

Downloads

To save the files, please right click on the title and select 'Save Target As...' from the menu.

Photocopiable 1A and 1B

Episode 1 audio