reading a text or listening to a recording, students role play a television interviewer and one of the characters from the text or recording. Interviewers prepare questions
together in groups; interviewees flesh out the character in groups. Students then pair up as one interviewer and one interviewee.
4.4.8 Problem solving: reorganising the zoo
Explain to the students that the local zoo is undergoing re-organisation andor that new animals are being welcomed into the zoo. The students are given a plan of the zoo; the
names of types of animals and certain criteria e.g. some animals cannot be close to each other e.g. the deer and tiger: the deer would be afraid. Some animals don’t smell
too good so they should not be close to the café. Avoid frightening or dangerous animals at the entrance: children would be put off. They need to decide where each
animal will be housed; it’s important to come to a consensus within the group so students will need to persuade each other that their opinion is the best. I first read
about this activity in Penny Ur’s Discussions That Work.
4.4.9 Discussion about jobs based on an activity in Discussions A-Z Intermediate
Give students a list of occupations; dictate the list or show pictures to elicit the job title. Examples include: teacher, stockbroker, waiter, secretary, dentist, nurse, taxi driver,
dinner lady, window cleaner, architect, hairdresser, cleaner, air traffic controller.
Ask students to discuss the jobs freely using the following questions as prompts: What are the daily tasks carried out in each of the jobs?
In your opinion, which job is the most interesting, boring, unpleasant, stressful, rewarding, important to society?
Which job is best-paid, most badly-paid? Do you know someone who does any of these jobs?
Which job would you most like to do and why? Which job would you least like to do and why?
4.4.10 Discussions based on pictures
It is a good idea to make a collection of pictures from magazines, newspapers, the Internet, etc. You can use them for a variety of purposes including using them as
prompts in your speaking classes. Here are three simple ideas that can be used with any picture:
You can ask students to simply describe the pictures: what is happening? How many people are there? and so on.
What are the people in the picture thinking? How do you think they are feeling? Why are they sitting there? or whatever it is they’re doing. What happened previously?
What is going to happen next? What are they talking about?
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Prepare and act out a conversation between the characters. The last two activities involve students interpreting and imagining about the content of
the picture.
4.4.11 Topic prompts
