Revisiting Super Size Me

Super Size Me movie poster [Fair use]

Freshly updated video-activity based on a classic fast food exposé

The news of Morgan Spurlock's death at the age of 53 prompted me to revisit this video activity we created some 15 years ago with a former British Council colleague, Charlotte Brander. I thought it was also appropriate to update the activity for the 20th anniversary of one of the most successful documentaries of all time. Additionally, the film has finally been uploaded to YouTube - legally - by the production company. Now, 20 years since its release, has it held up well? 

News Quiz 2023

Traditional end-of-year news quiz for the first lesson of the new year

Image by Fulton County Sheriff's Office,
State of Georgia via Wikipedia [Fair Use]

It's time for... News Quiz 2023! Following the annual tradition since the start of this blog, here comes the news quiz some of you have been waiting for.

As in the past three editions, the quiz uses a multiple choice format. This way you can get through the questions quickly and devote more time to discussing the stories and learning some language. As usual, the text is packed with very common lexical chunks (verified with the help of COCA) and other vocabulary items for your students to learn, practise and use. Some of these, such as made headlines, cause controversy and went viral (all from the Intermediate version), make recurring appearances in my news quizzes.

Not a word was spoken (but many were learned)

Video is often used in the EFL classroom for listening comprehension activities, facilitating discussions and, of course, language work. But how can you exploit silent films without any language in them? Since developing learners' linguistic resources should be our primary goal (well, at least the blogger behind the blog thinks so), here are four suggestions on how language (grammar and vocabulary) can be generated from silent clips.

News Quiz 2013 - Vocabulary

Images by Tim Evanson,  Gene Hunt
& Alex Alishevskikh via Flickr

As usual, as a follow up to the traditional end-of-year news quiz, here are language-focused activities aimed at reviewing and consolidating lexis from quiz. If you haven't seen the news quiz 2013, click HERE

This is how I usually use the quiz with my students.

Please note the quiz and the activities below come in two levels.

Traditional end-of-year news quiz 2012

Photo by Sandy Millin via eltpics

A bit less heavy on political news this year and featuring more sports, showbiz and gossip items, here is my traditional annual news quiz. As in the previous years, it is available in two levels: upper-intermediate/advanced and lower intermediate, and comes complete with 7-page teachers notes (scroll all the way down). The notes contain ideas on how to use the quiz in class and, no less importantly, how to explore the language. Check back in the first days of the New Year for vocabulary review activities (update - click here)

Honesty Day

April 30th is celebrated in the USA and some other countries as Honesty Day. To mark this day, Billy Joel's classic ballad was an obvious choice for my upper-intermediate students but then I also decided to develop some activities around it.

The activity outlined below is suitable for both teen and adult learners at Upper-Intermediate (B2) level and up

If I were a boy

This activity based on Beyonce's song is suitable for older teens and adults at pre-intermediate level and up. The lesson plan is based on the listening activity template I blogged about earlier (click here). An Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB) is desirable but not essential.




IWB techniques

Two IWB techniques are used here: in the pre- and post-listening stages of the lesson.

Before you listen, here are some words you may not know

Pre-listening activities: what to focus on?

At last year's IATEFL conference in Brighton I was at a presentation on teaching listening where I got into a bit of an argument with the speaker. I don't know if it was my nerves before my own, first presentation at IATEFL but I wasn't on my best behaviour, which I later regretted. The whole situation was rather ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was the fact that in principle I agreed with the presenter who argued that there is little benefit in pre-teaching vocabulary before listening activities - I wouldn't agree though with his claim the word "prowl", one my favourite words in English, is useless :)

There is an interesting piece of research to substantiate the speaker's argument, which he surprisingly did not mention. Chang and Read (2006) administered a listening comprehension test to160 students who were divided into four groups and received a different kind of support: