Verbs That Summarize What People Say
Upper Intermediate level
Description
Materials
Main Aims
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To provide clarification of verbs that summarize what people say in the context of the media.
Subsidiary Aims
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To provide detailed reading practice using a text about the lottery in the context of the media
Procedure (42-51 minutes)
Tell the students that you have a list of statements, and they were either said by a film star, the manager of a sports team, or a politician. Write them on the board. Tell the students to say which statement was said by whom. Display the questions from LF2 from the projector onto the WB, and elicit the answers to each statement from the sts. After finishing, point to statement A. Ask the students what the manager is saying in this statement. Eventually write out, "The manager ADMITTED THAT it had been a dissappointing game." B: "The politician ACCUSED the minister OF constantly lying. C: "The film star completely REFUSED TO answer any questions about his relationship." Write on WB "Apologize, deny, insist, suggest, tell". Get sts to match them to the remaining sentences. Make sure that they use the past tense! Elicit from the students what these short statements are (looking for summary). Draw a comparison on summaries vs. reported speech, which Jamal has just taught.
Tell the students that you have a worksheet that is similar to what was just done on the board. They must put in the correct form of the word as required. Students are split into pairs and given the sheet to fill in. Quickly run through the answers, and then instruct the students to work on the second part of the activity.
Ask the students about the lottery in Turkey. Is there a lottery in Istanbul? Does anyone in the class know a winner? Is anyone in the class a lottery winner? Explain to the students that you have a text about a couple in the UK who won the lottery. Tell the students to ignore the gaps in the text for the moment. Present the students with the provided questions for them to look for, tell them to focus only on the questions, and give them a few minutes to read the document. Go over the answers as a whole class. Explain to the students about the gaps in the text. There are provided words for the text (summary words), but in the incorrect form. Put the students into pairs and let them work through the text, correcting the forms as needed.
In the same pairs, give the students a list of the original quotations from the book, and elicit the correct form of the summary verb. If needed as time allows, do it as a WC activity. To change the interaction patterns, we will do the next segment as a WC activity. Try to get a class discussion going on the topic. Students will discuss the following questions (which the teacher will write on the WB): Were Camelot right? Do you think the media were at fault or not? Do you feel any sympathy for Martyn and Kay? ALTERNATELY: If time is an issue, make it a WC discussion. Take a few minutes to perform error correction on problem speech.
If time permits, pair the students off. Tell them that they will be speaking as a Camelot official, Kay Tott or Martyn Tott. The other classmate will be a journalist. In their role, the student will tell the journalist what happened from their point of view. Switch the roles when finished.