Lesson 4

The lesson plan

1. Lexical exercises. Active vocabulary (7 min)

• Listening (15 min)

• Listening comprehension (7 min)

2. Speaking practice ()

LEXICAL EXERCISES

I. Match the words and their definitions given below:

Grade, high school, diploma, vocational, score, higher school, standards, selective subjects, term, admission, middle class, boarding school, mandatory subjects, loan, campus.

educational certificate of proficiency – diploma

a school where pupils study and live – boarding school

being accepted to a school, a club – admission

the mark given to a student for his work – grade

subjects that every student must study – mandatory subjects

institution for giving secondary education – high school

subjects that a student may choose – selective subjects

academic requirements – standards

professional – vocational

record points – score

universities – higher school

class of society between the poor and the rich – middle class

one of the periods into which the academic year is divided – term

place where students live – campus

sum of money given to a person who should return it – loan

Listening

(The purpose of the Listening exercises is to give students an opportunity of practice in listening to spoken English and to develop skills to make them better listeners. The task is to help them to understand the main points that are made – and to discourage them for listening to every single word or worrying about the words they don’t understand.

The voices represent a variety of authentic accents, and the speech contains the normal hesitations, false starts, pauses and interruptions that occur in authentic spoken language. All these hesitations and false starts are reproduced in the transcripts.):

You will hear Rachel talking about her schools-days. Put ticks in the chart with information about her:

Transcript

Rachel:	My name is Rachel Babington and I work in public relations for kids’ TV channel.
Interviewer:	And what sort of schools did you go to?
Rachel:	Um...I had quite a stable...um...er...sort of school life really. Um... I stayed in the same town for my whole childhood, so I went to quite a small...um...primary school, and then when I moved to secondary school I went to a different one from most of the f...friends I was with because I went to a Catholic school...um...so I kind of had a...a...a fresh start with totally new friends.
Interviewer:	And at primary school, did you enjoy it?
Rachel:	Yeah, I did. I... it was quite a...quite a kind of safe little environment, it wasn’t a big primary school and... I remember, you know, having friends for quite a...a long time.
Interviewer:	Was there anything that you really didn’t like?
Rachel:	Oh gosh, maths! Definitely, I was hopeless, absolutely hopeless at it.
Interviewer:	And what about secondary school?
Rachel:	That was quite a big sort of trauma really because sort of leaving all your friends behind and doing a completely fresh school where everybody sort of knew each other, I found really scary. And after I’d settled in for about a year, I...um...after about a year I moved up to..a stream, so again I had to kind of start again making friends and it was all quite stressful.
Interviewer:	Um...what where you favourite subjects at secondary school?
Rachel:	Oh, I...I loved...um...English really. English and I quite liked geography and history, um...but things like science and maths, where I really didn’t shine, were my least favourite.
Interviewer:	Have you ever been back to your secondary school?
Rachel:	No, and I think I’d be really nervous to go back, I think it’s a kind of scary thing to do, all those memories...

Listening comprehension

Didn’t like maths or science Enjoyed outdoor activities Had to make friends at secondary school Has a twin brother Liked English, geography and history Played tricks on people	+
	+
	+

Leo Jones, Making Progress, Cambridge.

SPEAKING PRACTICE

The students in pairs are offered to make a questionnaire about the university and students’ activity (in the Present Simple Tense), using all the information, discussed before.

After that they should make up dialogues on the theme. We advise to remind them to use active vocabulary and useful phrases in their dialogues and to give another group of useful expressions:

Asking and answering questions:

Could you repeat, please... That’s a good question!

As far as I know/understand... Well, let me think...

Will you tell me, please... Let me see...

If I’m not mistaken... I need to think about it for a moment.

May I ask one more question? Well, I’m glad you asked me that.

Some students like to ask provocative questions, knowing that the groupmates don’t know exact answer. Explain them that unpredictable situations happen very often in real life and advise them to store other useful phrases, just in case:

Well, that’s hard to say right now, but next time I’ll try to answer!