New English File Pre-Intermediate Teacher’s site

Coolers

1A

On the board, write a list of answers to imaginary questions about yourself, for example: in London

rock and classical on the 2nd of April Peter and Louise the guitar

Students take it in turns to choose an answer and ask the question that goes with it. For example, the question for in London would be Where do you live? Rub out each answer after the question has been asked. If you want, you could make it competitive, with teams receiving a point for a correct question. Include some yes/no answers like Yes, I am, No, I haven’t, Yes, I do, etc., so that students can ask their own questions, such as Are you married? Have you got any pets? Have you been to Brazil? Do you enjoy teaching?

Here are some possible questions for you to give answers to:

Where do you live?

What kind of music do you like? When is your birthday?

What are your parents’ names?

What musical instrument do you play? What sports do you like?

Where are you going to go on holiday? What time did you go to bed last night? What foreign languages do you speak? Do you have any brothers and sisters? Where were you born?

What did you have for breakfast? What are you going to do this evening?

What time do you get up?

Where did you go on holiday last year?

1B

Divide the class into two teams. Get a student from each team to come up and sit with their backs to the board. Write one of the personality adjectives from Vocabulary Bank page 145 on the board. Each team must try to define the adjective without saying the word

(for example, This person never spends any money, never gives presents, etc.). Alternatively, the teams could mime the adjectives with no speaking.

The two students with their backs to the board have to say the adjective. The first student to say the word correctly gets a point for their team. Get new students to come to the board and repeat with the rest of the adjectives. The team with the most points is the winner.

1C

Get students to close their books. Hold up pages 4 and 5 and ask them if they remember those pages. Close the book and ask:

A man is studying. Is he reading or writing?

Two people are drinking coffee. What colour dress is the one on the right wearing?

When they have answered, explain that they are going to test each others’ memory. Organize students in pairs. Student A will have 30 seconds to look at the pictures on page 4 while Student B thinks of some questions. Student A then closes the book and answers five questions from Student B.

Students then swap roles. Student B studies the pictures on pages 28–9 for 30 seconds while Student A thinks of some questions. The one who answers most questions right is the winner.

1D

Draw this table on the board.

Ask students to tell you a word for each category (examples: /eI/ – play, they; /@U/ – no, slow, /aI/ – die, night, /A;/ – car, park; /V/ – sun, come, /e/ – help, best). Arrange students in pairs and get them to copy the table. Tell them to look around for five minutes, inside the classroom and out of the window, and collect words containing vowels from the table. After five minutes, complete your table with the words they have collected. Have a dictionary ready to check any doubtful cases.

Here are a few examples of words they could find:

You could do this activity with different sets of phonemes, and different topics (such as food, animals, parts of the body, jobs, etc.)

2A

Give students a few minutes to read through the three texts again. Then get them to close their books. Students have to put their hand up every time you make a mistake (these are highlighted in bold, with the correct answer in brackets) and correct the information from memory.

Tim

When I was a little boy (teenager), I went on holiday with my girlfriend (parents) to Brittany in France. My parents rented a lovely house in the mountains (on the beach) and the weather was great. But I was seven (seventeen), and I wanted (didn’t want) to be on holiday with my mum, and dad, and my little brother. I wanted to be with my friends. We went to the swimming pool (beach), every day and sunbathed and we went to a fantastic pizza (seafood) restaurant for my birthday.

Gabriela

I’m from Milan (Rome) and the summer here is really cloudy (hot). So last year my daughter (husband) and I decided to go to Switzerland (Sweden) to escape from the rain

(heat). We booked a 10-week (10-day) holiday in Stockholm, where the temperature in winter (summer) is about 20 degrees. But when we got to Stockholm there was a heatwave and it was 35 degrees every night (day).

Kelly

Three years ago I got married to (broke up with) my boyfriend and decided to go on holiday with some friends (on my own) to the Seychelles. My travel agent told me that it was an expensive (a wonderful) place, but he didn’t tell me it was also a very popular place for people on their own (on their honeymoon). Everywhere I looked, I saw couples kissing (holding hands) and looking into each other’s ears (eyes).

2B

Dictate or write on the board the following (you may want to adapt them, depending on what time of day you teach your class):

6.00 yesterday evening

7.00 this morning.

2003

this time yesterday two hours ago

9.30

Put students in pairs and get each student to work individually and write down what he/she thought his/her partner was doing at that time. Students then read their sentences to their partner and see how many of their guesses were right. Make sure students are in different pairs from when they did Pronunciation 4e on page 19.

2C

Play ‘noughts and crosses’ (‘tic-tac-toe’).Divide the class into two teams. One team is ‘noughts’ (0), the other is ‘crosses’ ( ). Draw this grid on the board.

agree

think (about) argue speak

think (of) write

Student A must make the first sentence of a story using one of the verbs above (in any tense). The group then crosses out that word. Student B now makes the second sentence. Continue until all the words are crossed out. Get one person from each group to tell their story to the whole class.

4A

Tell students you are going to describe somebody from File 2. They have to listen and tell you which page they are on. Say ‘This person is wearing a pink suit and a black top.’ The first student to find this person should put their hands up (Allie, bottom of page 24).

Put students in small groups. One student opens the book (so others can’t see the page), says which File they are looking at, and describes the clothes of one of the people. The first of the other students to find the person gets a point. It is then their turn to open the book and describe someone’s clothes.

4B

Get students to copy these circles.

Dictate this list of infinitives (not the past participles).

do /dVn/

teach /tO;t/

wear /wO;/

lose /lQst/

come /kVm/

drink /drVnk/

buy /bO;t/

go /gQn/

fight /fO;t/

cut /kVt/

win /wVn/

catch /kO;t/

begin /bI’"gVn/

get /gQt/

Working in pairs, students write the past participle of each verb in the appropriate circle according to the vowel it contains, for example done in the /V/ circle.

4C

Write on the board or dictate these phrases:

working studying sitting in traffic seeing friends

talking on the phone buying clothes cooking

eating watching sport

watching the news doing housework going on holiday

Each student numbers these randomly and secretly.

Students work in pairs. Student A says two numbers from 1–12. Student B says which activities these represent and B must make a sentence comparing the two. They mustn’t use the same adjective twice, and should use a variety of comparative forms, i.e. /-er than, more…than, less…than, and (not) as… as …

For example,

Eating is easier than cooking.

I spend more time sitting in traffic than studying. Talking on the phone isn’t as good as seeing friends.

Students swap roles after each turn.

4D

Do a world records quiz with your students.

Dictate the list of the phrases below (not the numbers in brackets) and tell students to note them down:

Working in pairs, students discuss each record and together guess the weight, length, speed, or height. Make it clear to students that you don’t expect them to know the answers. They have to make an intelligent guess. At the end, the team that guessed closest to the true record gets a point.

5A

Dictate these verbs: try

pretend stop want decide forget

remember start

On the board, draw a man lying on the ground. Arrange students in small groups. One person begins the story: On my way to school today, I saw a man lying on the ground and continues the story using the first verb on the list. Students then take it in turns to add a new sentence using a different verb from the list. Continue until all the verbs have been used.

At the end, groups compare their stories.

5B

Tell the class about something you loved doing when you were a small child, a bigger child or a teenager. Add a few details, let them ask questions if they want, and ask them if they felt the same about the activity. Then tell them about something you hated doing at a different age.

Tell students to think of two things they loved doing and two things they hated doing at different ages, then talk about them in pairs or small groups.

5C

Give students a few minutes to read through the main text again. Then get them to close their books. Students have to put their hand up every time you make a mistake (these are highlighted in bold, with the correct answer in brackets) and correct the information from memory.

I work for a newspaper (magazine), which was doing an article about American (British) language learners. As an experiment, they asked me to learn a new language for one week (month). Then I had to go to school (the country) and do some ‘tests’ to see if I could survive in different situations. I decided to learn Russian (Polish) because my grandmother (great-grandmother) was Russian (Polish) and I have some friends (relatives) there. I can already speak Italian (French) and Spanish quite well, but Russian

(Polish) isn’t a Greek-based (Latin-based) language so I knew it would be completely impossible (different).

I did a one-week (one-month) intensive course at a language school in London (Birmingham). I thought I was good at languages before I started learning Russian (Polish), but now I’m not so sure. I found it a bit (incredibly) difficult. The vocabulary (grammar) was really complicated and the pronunciation (words) were not like any other language I know.

5D

Divide the class into two teams. Get one student to come up to the board and show him / her one of the Prepositions of movement from the Vocabulary Bank page 148. He / She has one minute to draw it on the board while the rest of his / her team has to guess what the preposition phrase is (for example down the steps). If they guess within one minute, show the student another preposition. After exactly one minute they must stop drawing and sit down. Then a student from the other group comes up. Show him / her a preposition and this time his / her team has one minute. If the team guesses the phrase correctly within in minute, show the student a new one. Repeat until each team has had three minutes of drawing. The winning team is the one with most correct guesses.

6A

Arrange students in pairs or small teams. Tell the class that you’re going to dictate 20 words. One person in each group should write them down as you say them, on a large piece of paper so the other student(s) can see. When a word has the same vowel sound as a previous word, they must raise a hand and say the two words – if they are right their team gets a point. All the groups then cross those two words off their lists.

lost book you kick

two (same sound as you) put (same sound as book) key

wrong (same sound as lost) pull

teach (same sound as key) which (same sound as kick) hot

feet choose

pool (same sound as choose) bill

good (same sound as pull) what (same sound as hot) heat (same sound as feet) boot

through (same sound as boot) think (same sound as bill)

6B

Get the class to choose an animal from Vocabulary Bank page 151 (you can leave the room while they choose an animal). Explain that you are going to ask them questions to try to work out what animal it is. Get students to count how many questions you ask.

Some example questions:

Is it dangerous?

Is it bigger than a cat? Does it eat meat?

Can it swim / climb trees? Does it have fur / four legs?

Does it only live in hot countries?

When you think you know what the animal is, you can guess. (Is it a kangaroo?)

Now get students to do the same in pairs. Student A chooses an animal, Student B asks yes / no questions until he / she can guess the animal. Student A should count the number of questions. An incorrect guess should count as three questions. Then swap roles.

6C

Write these phonetic symbols on the board. /&/ /m/ /I/ /dZ/ /@/ /n/. Tell students to try and put them in order to make a word from the lesson (imagine). If they are stuck, tell them that /I/ is the first sound.

Write these ‘phonetic anagrams’ on the board. Tell students that they are all words in 5 Vocabulary. Students work in pairs and race to sort out the phonemes, add the correct stress, and write the word.

6D

Arrange students in pairs or small teams. Tell them that you are going to give team A a situation, which they must keep secret. This is team B’s problem. Team / pair A must give team B advice about the problem, and team B must guess what the problem is. They mustn’t use any of the words contained in the problems. Give team B a new situation and swap roles.

They are shy.

They can’t wake up in the morning. They can’t sleep.

They can’t concentrate on their work. They have an awful boss at work