Fashion: Explanation

Fashion

• Details

Name of Item	Fashion
Activity Type	Vocabulary / Discussion
Student Level	Intermediate - Upper Intermediate
Time Allowance	15 - 25 minutes
Preparation Required	Preparing to explain vocabulary items
Other Items Needed	none
Vocabulary	Role Model / Sensible / Way out / Up to date / Out of fashion / Fashion Conscious / Conservative / Fashion Victim
Grammar	(sentence pattern awareness)

• Instructions

Decide whether to pre-teach the vocabulary or whether ask students to use dictionaries. Either way, the class should proceed as quickly as possible with the sentence completion. Once everybody has a complete set of sentences and you have checked that they all have the same answers, you can move on to discussion of the sentences. Possible correct answers are as follows

out of fashion
way out
conservative
role-model
fashion victim
up to date
sensible
fashion conscious

I always prefer to let my students individually make up their minds whether they agree with the sentences first, before they try to discuss their ideas with others. Where some students might simply agree with a prevailing opinion, getting them to write before they consult, forces them (gently) to say what they actually think.

In the final activity, students write a few questions on the subject of fashion and then, ask others, hopefully continuing further dialogue with follow-on questions. To help reinforce the vocabulery from part one, you may want to make an extra rule / instruction that each of the students' questions should contain one of the words or phrases from the list at the top of the page.