American or British English: Explanation

American or British English

• Details

Name of Item	American or British English
Activity Type	Discussion / Vocabulary
Student Level	High Intermediate
Time Allowance	20 - 30 minutes
Preparation Required	Photocopying and preparing yourself to explain the various vocabulary items if necessary.
Other Items Needed	None
Vocabulary	Usage / identical / second language / penalized / subtitled / dubbed / bear a resemblance to / subtle / loan words / diverged
Grammar	(Sentence pattern awareness)

• Instructions

If you want something to teach different items in US and UK vocab, this is not it. It is a class discussion sheet that introduces a lot of the vocabulary that we as teachers use when talking to each other about teaching.

Decide whether to preteach the vocabulary items or ask students to look them up in dictionaries. They may be able to guess a few of them (e.g. subtitles) from the context and their experience (of watching English-language movies). When they understand them all, ask students individually to read the sentences and make their own decisions about whether the sentences are true. As students finish, group them into 4s or 5s and ask them to compare their answers and debate any which they disagree on.

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.

If students ask for correct answers a fairly safe response would be; that 1, 6, 7, and 8 are true and that in the case of number 3, American and British English are probably used by roughly equal numbers of people worldwide, but US English use is growing more quickly.