98 Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
students. Here are some examples of activities that carry the same theme
throughout each of the three stages of the lesson.
Writing a blurb
The blurb is the text at the back of a book or film that tells you why you should
buy it. It usually contains a synopsis of the plot and some information about
the cast or author. Over the years I’ve noticed that very often the language
used is quite sophisticated even when the entertainment is aimed at children.
So rewriting an existing blurb and creating new ones are great ways of exer-
cising language skills with students who are intermediate level and above.
After an initial Presentation stage focusing on vocabulary for describing
films, for example, students can tell each other specific details about a recent
film they’ve seen – plot, stars, genre, format and so on.
Next introduce the film(s) using the title and pictures from the cover. You can
use different films for different groups or just one for the whole class. The
students can use this initial information to make predictions about the film.
For this you may decide to use a less well-known movie so that the students
really have to discover the information.
Now you can distribute the blurb(s) for students to examine.
Pair students and ask them to skim the blurb for particular details about the
new film(s).
Next the students should analyse the language content of the blurb and,
using dictionaries and/or a glossary, ask students, in pairs, to simplify the
blurb using synonyms for the tricky words.
Form the students into new groups based on a film they’ve all seen.
Together they must now pool their knowledge to come up with a blurb for
that film.
Spin off activities from this include listening to, acting out or narrating clips
of the film.
Doing class surveys and reports........................................................
Find out from the class about topics they’re all interested in. From this start-
ing point you can determine a good topic for a survey and have the students
prepare survey questions based on the topic.
