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| 3/10/2010 |  | |||||
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Excuses and More Excuses
This unit should take 1-2 hours, depending on time, interest, and extension activities. It is designed for intermediate level students age 14 and above. Objectives Students will: Materials to Print
Activities Activity I: What are you doing this weekend? (5 minutes) Start the class by asking students what they don't like to do on weekends. If they need help, suggest activities such as "study in the library, get up early, see a science fiction movie, clean your apartment, do laundry," and so on. Write down some of their answers on the board. Then invite students to do some of these things with you. For instance, "Would you like to go to the library on Saturday at 8am?" Watch students' reactions (they should decline the invitation and give an excuse). Explain that today's class is about giving excuses. Talk about the importance of being able to come up with a good excuse in some situations. Activity II: Vocabulary (15 minutes) Give students some time to come up with more excuses so that they will not have to go to the library at 8am this Saturday. Encourage them to use have to. Write some of the excuses on the board. Then, review the different ways of inviting somebody to do something, accepting and declining an invitation (see list below). Finally, hand out copies of Printout I, and introduce the vocabulary. Have students say a sentence for each new word or expression. Invitations: Would you like to + inf.? Why don't we + inf.? How about + ger.? Declining: Sorry, I can't. I'm afraid I can't. I'm busy on (Saturday). I'd love to, but I have to. . . Perhaps some other time. Accepting: I'd love to. Yes, that'd be great. When students are familiar with all the new words, invite them individually to do the following: see a very bad thriller, go to the worst restaurant in town for dinner, spend 10 hours in a car, watch a war documentary marathon on TV, clean the oven, and so on." Make sure students use the new vocabulary to make excuses. Encourage them to use have to. Then have them do the same in pairs. Activity III: What Do You Say? (10 minutes) Hand out copies of Printout II and have students do the activity. Model the first example. Check the answers in class. If you have time, ask students to think of other similar situations using the expressions they have just learned. Activity IV: Friends and Excuses (15 minutes) Ask students whether they would get upset if a friend gave them an excuse they knew was not true. Talk about when it is acceptable to tell a white lie, and when it is not. "Is it OK to give a fake excuse to a good friend? Or should we always tell the truth?" Have students suggest different situations. If they need help, suggest some of the following situations: 1. Your friend wants to see the new Star Wars movie and you hate science fiction movies. 2. Your friend invites you to go out with some of his old school friends. You really don't like them. 3. Your friend wants to go dancing, and you'd love to go. But after you see what he/she's wearing you decide that you do not want to be seen with him/her. Then, hand out copies of Printout III. Explain that this is a list of different qualities in a friend. Ask students to number them according to what they think is important. Number 1 should be the most important. Ask them to give an example for each situation. Activity V: Are they right? (15 minutes) Explain that you are going to read about different situations. Three people tell us about their experiences with one of their friends, which resulted in the end of their friendships. Read the titles first and have students make predictions about what the situations might be. Then read the text. Help students with difficult words, such as guy, all sorts of, serial killer, found out, broke up, incompatible, pneumonia, stage and performance. Together, identify what the problem is for each situation. Then, talk about whether the writer is right or not. Do you all agree? Activity VI: Role-play (10 minutes) Review the expressions used in Activity II. Then, make several copies of Printout V and make cards with them. Divide the class into pairs. Each pair should get two cards, A and B; one student plays the role of A, the other one the role of B. Have students role play the situations, following the instructions. The text in parentheses is information they know about the other person. Explain that specific instructions are given at first, but then they can continue the dialog as they wish. Finally, have students perform the dialogs in class. Activity VII: The Best (Fake!) Excuses (10 minutes) Divide the class into small groups and write the categories (see below) on the board. Each group has to come up with an excuse for each category. Then, vote for the best excuse in each category. The excuse that always works (in all situations) The worst excuse (that never works) The best excuse for being late for class The funniest excuse The funniest excuse for speeding If you want to give some ideas to students, see the Top Ten Speeding Excuses at http://www.k40.com/Top10.html. |