Lesson 8 – Star quality

Warm up

This activity is more suitable for teenagers and younger adults.

1.  Ask about students’ favorite musicians/bands.
2. Ask them to describe their style and appearance, and why they like them.

Main Activity

Listening

Tell students to listen to the recording and answer the questions.

Speaking

1. Put students into groups of four, divided into pairs. Tell each pair are a business partner: one pair is an agent; the other pair is the manager. Down below are the role cards. Secretly tell the students their role.
   The students can ask what’s their partner’s card is, but not the others.
   
2.  Tell them to discuss the problem on their card with their partners.
3. Explain that the managers are going to phone the agents. Here’s the instruction:
   Managers:
   – Describe who is leaving and who you need. Make notes about possible replacements.
   – Make notes about possible musicians for your partner’s hands.
   Agents:
   – Try to persuade them to hire your musicians.
   – If they do not want to advise them to phone your partner
4. Tell each manager to phone an agent; sit back-to-back for this
5. Ask managers to phone the other agent
6. Tell students to go back to their partners.
   Ask managers to talk about who they want to choose
   Ask agents to discuss who the managers might choose.
7. Tell both managers and agents to get together and look at the pictures of the Musicians. Tell managers they can change their choices if they want.
8. Ask which managers chose well and who had to change their minds, Ask which agents were most persuasive.

Follow up

• The groups of four work together and discuss what the main audience will be for each band. What type of people will most of your fans be? They should think about age, male or female, other interests, and anything else they can think of.
• They write a short ‘audience profile’ for each band, describing the typical fan.
• They think about how and where they should advertise to connect with those fans.
• Group compares ideas.