Materials: Guidelines

This was originally designed for a high level "business English" class but it could possibly be used more broadly. To start off with, students match the issues on the left of the upper table with the suggestions on the right. In the course of this, they should become conversant with the vocabulary items included - maybe by using their own dictionaries.

Having done this, they can quickly decide (individually) which of the suggestions they think are good, before comparing their ideas and debating any disagreements. I find this technique, of getting students to commit themselves to opinions in writing, before they discuss them, is a good way of encouraging contention, especially where some class members have a tendency to always agree with what the last speaker said.

In the next part, another matching activity involves matching negative quality adjectives (e.g. "excessive") with an explanation that roughly corresponds to a "likely source" of that quality when it's present in a foreign visitor scenario (e.g. making an inapropriately large effort).

Finally students can discuss one of the situations at the bottom of the page. This is particularly interesting when one or more class members have had such an experience and even better if they are willing to talk about what went wrong.

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.