Alice Park Alice Park

Functional Language for Agreeing and Disagreeing
Upper Intermediate level

Description

In this lesson, students will be introduced to and will practice functional language for agreeing and disagreeing. Using the functional language phrases they heard from the previous lesson's listening section, they will learn the differences in meanings and usage. Within the context of animal rights, the students will go through a couple exercises where they can assert their own opinions, and the lesson will finish with a class debate.

Materials

Abc Handout #2
Abc Listening
Abc Debate Handout
Abc Table of Opinions/Disagreement
Abc Handout #1
Abc Opinions Handout
Abc Handout #2

Main Aims

  • To introduce and practice functional language for agreeing and disagreeing

Subsidiary Aims

  • Speaking for fluency

Procedure

Warmer (2 minutes) • To summarize the speakers' opinions (from the previous lesson's learning)

Ask these questions: 1) Who were the three people that we heard in the listening exercise? 2) What was Jean's opinion? What was Tom's opinion? What was the presenter's opinion?

Lead-in (3-5 minutes) • To practice expressions for agreeing and disagreeing

Tell the students that we will practice expressions for agreeing and disagreeing. Lead them into the course book's exercise 1. The students will work on ex. 1 in pairs. Then, we will listen to the listening (ex. 2) to check their answers. We will go over the answers quickly as a class.

Focus on Language (3-5 minutes) • Focus on the finer shades of differences in meaning or usage of the practice expressions

T will project a table consisting of four categories: Expressing Opinion (General), Expressing Opinion (strong), Disagreement (soft), Disagreement (strong). The other side of the table will be the 9 practice expressions. The students will guess which phrases go into which table. This will show them the slight differences between the practice expressions. Anticipated CCQ: If I were a member of the Urban fox lovers, would I say, "I may be wrong, but foxes don't attack children." [NO] Would I say, "I don't believe for a minute that foxes will attack children." [YES]

Focus on Language (5 minutes) • Pronunciation of phrases/understanding main stress in the phrases

Explain the exercise to the students, and let them listen to the same listening again. But this time, the students will listen for main stresses in the phrases. After the listening is over, T will call one S up at a time to underline the main stress on the WB. Then, in pairs, students will practice reading these phrases to each other with the correct stresses.

Controlled Practice (3 minutes) • Practice expressing opinions

The students will work on an exercise in pairs. They will fill in the blanks accordingly. [If times allows] After the students are done with the exercise, they will match up the opinions in A to a response in B.

Semi-controlled practice (5 minutes) • Have the students practice expressing their opinions to each other

T will pass out small slips of paper to everyone. On each slip of paper is a statement. In pairs, students will read the statement out loud to each other, and the other person will react to the statement by stating his/her own opinion. At the end of the exercise, some students will share with the entire class about their partner's opinions.

Freer practice (20 minutes) • To organize a debate using speaking ex. 1

Students will count off from 1-4, and will move to the four corners of the room according to their number (ideally, there would be four ppl per corner). The four people will be paired up and given a slip of paper. This paper will determine whether the pair of students is for or against something. There will be about four statements, and each pair will be for or against these four statements. Everyone will be given five minutes to discuss their argument. After, the pairs will debate with their opposing pairs. At the end, each group will share one strong argument from the opposite team.

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