Approve or Disapprove: Explanation

Approve Or Disapprove

• Details

Name of Item	A Blessing Or A Curse
Activity Type	Discussion / Vocabulary / Writing
Student Level	Intermediate
Time Allowance	30 - 45 minutes
Preparation Required	Preparing to explain vocabulary items
Other Items Needed	None
Vocabulary	life-saver / time-saver / alternative / a comfort to / beneficial / menace / wreck / detrimental / time-waster / harmful / encourage / abacus / disposable
Grammar	Sentence pattern awareness

• Instructions

Decide whether to pre-teach vocabulary items or ask students to look them up in dictionaries. Some guessing of meaning from context should be possible. Ask students to identify words in the second group of sentences that have opposite meanings to words in the first set.

Then instruct the class to write their own opinions about the items in the grid below and use the sentence patterns, already encountered to write reasons to back up those opinions. They should be working individually at this point. As they finish writing, group them into 4s and 5s to compare their answers and debate any that they disagree on. By first reading, then writing and finally talking, the phrases / sentence patterns should be firmly fixed in the students' minds (at least until the end of the class). It is however, important to listen for obvious errors and misapprehensions and point these out, both while they are writing and later during the discussion.