Lesson 4 – Family Tentions

Warm up

1 . Tell students that you are going to talk about how to help people with difficult situations. Your neighbour throws rubbish in your garden. Ask several students in turn to tell you the problem and you reply with any of the following questions:

What would you like to do about that? How do you feel about that?

Is there anything you can do about it?

Then get the students to reply, e.g.

STUDENT:  My neighbour throws rubbish in my back garden.

TEACHER:  How do you feel  about that?

STUDENT: Angry

Ask students to dictate the questions to you, or write them up as blank lines with first letters to help students remember, filling in word by word, e g.

H_ d_ y_ f_ a_ t_?

With the questions on the board, ask students how they help. Elicit that they do not offer suggestions or advice,  just help people to see how they feel.

2. Now tell students they are going to hear two friends discussing the same problem. Ask students to write down any other questions they hear. Play the recording three times.

Check their answers, and write them on the board or web:

1. Is there anything you can do about it?
2. What would you like to happen?
3. How about asking them?
4. What would you like to do about that?
5. Why don’t you ask them round for coffee?

Ask which questions give advice (3 and 5). Explain that in English, advice is often in question form. Elicit other forms of How about   .? and Why don’t you  … ?: What about  …? and Why not  …?

Main activity

1. Tell students that they are going to give advice on difficult situations. Put them in pairs and give out the role cards. Explain that they should use the information to tell their partner about their problem. Their partner should ask helpful questions and give advice. Check that they understand the cards.
2. As an example, role-play just the start of A1 yourself, getting any Student B to respond.
3. Tell them they should take it in turns to give advice. Ask Student A to start with A1.
4. Go around helping them towards solutions.
5. Compare the different solutions to each of the six problems. Ask which solutions students think are the best.

Follow up

• Write down one situation (problem)
• From this situation, type answers and suggestions for the problem, then collect the results of the answers in the form of a recording