Dangerous: Explanation

Dangerous

• Details

Name of Item	A Dangerous World
Activity Type	Vocabulary / Discussion
Student Level	Lower Intermediate - Intermediate
Time Allowance	15 -20 minutes
Preparation Required	preparing to explain vocabulary items
Other Items Needed	plastic bag / small plastic toy / bare ended electric cable - (for demonstration purposes)
Vocabulary	choke / suffocate / drown / electrocuted / poisoned / scalded / attacked / definitely
Grammar	"will" future with qualifying adverbs

• Instructions

Unless you think they will really have trouble, try letting the class do the vocabulary-meaning matching activity without preteaching of the words. Explain / elicit any harder words if they get stuck. You may find it helpful to use actual physical examples of some of the objects described to illustrate the dangers.

Then, have students mark a number of items in the list below which they think would be dangerous in the situation described. To increase the likelihood of disagreement you may want to specify a number of items that they must mark or must not exceed. Once they have made their decisions they are ready to compare their ideas, debating any that they disagree about.

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 other speakers have said.

For lower level groups you may want to model the dialogue first, making use of the sentence pattern at the bottom of the page as well the essential "Why do you think so?" and "Why, don't you agree?".