Materials: Guidelines

Decide whether to preteach vocabulary, allow students to use own dictionaries or introduce new words / phrases via "pre-discussion" of the topic as a group.

Instruct students to complete the sentences on their own in a fairly short space of time, monitoring and checking for any serious misapprehensions. Then divide the class into discussion groups of 4 / 5 and tell them to compare their ideas and debate any differences of opinion where they arise.

I find the technique of getting students to commit themselves to opinions in writing, before they discuss, is a good way of encouraging contention, especially where some class members have a tendency to always agree with what the last speaker said.

The second part, which extends the activity further, encourages students to use the phrases in writing, having already familiarized themselves with it by reading and speaking. This hopefully will reinforce any new items to the point where learners just might remember them.

You have a choice of two different methods of getting this handout to your printer. It all depends on whether your computer has "Adobe Acrobat Reader" installed. If it has, then this would be the recommended method for printing out the worksheet. Try selecting the "PDF (Adobe Acrobat)" link below. If all goes well, a new application window should appear including a print button, which when selected will print out one copy.

If, on the other hand you do not have "Adobe Acrobat" select the "HTML (web page)" link below. (Also, this method is recommended for users of Netscape Navigator, which seems to have trouble interacting with the Acrobat program like this.) If all goes well, a new browser window will open, from which you can either click the "print button" on the toolbar or open the "File" menu, select "Print" and then adjust the "Print Dialog Box" to your own preferences.

The final link below is to enable you to print this "instruction page" if you want to. Click on the link, and when the page appears on a new screen you will be able to print it using the browser's "print button" or "file menu". After printing, close the window again so that you can continue to navigate around the site.

For teacher training courses, English courses in Bristol UK and free interactive exercises, visit The Language Project Website.