B1 – Our Home, Our World

The unthinkable has happened! On 12th September, I received a mysterious e-mail from someone from Preply, inviting me to be one of the course tutors. Obviously, I accepted! How could I not? I’ve been teaching Preply ready-made group lessons for about five months now, and it felt like the next natural step in my online teaching career.

After being a bit sceptical and verifying that the message was a real invitation from Preply, I followed all the necessary steps to be a part of this experience. Immediately I took it to Twitter to get some topic course ideas. My first instinct was either environment or celebrity gossip/pop culture. However, this quickly changed as I was asked to provide a short description of the 1-10 hour long course. Since my first idea was to go with the flow, I had to actually sit down and figure it out ASAP.

Exciting news! #preply invited me to design my own course and teach group lessons! Now I need to think of a "theme". From what I've seen there are many travel, business and general conversation groups already. What should I do? Environment? Pop culture? Idk…🤔#help
— Joanna H. (@joannaesl) September 12, 2022

I had a look at all existing courses to avoid any repetition. There were a few on food, breaking news, and job interviews… The list goes on! I decided to design a six-hour course on housing. The course ranges from describing unusual accommodations, talking about our dream houses, everyday language to rent a house and talking about the problems and future of housing. Below you can see a list of lessons from the B1 course titled My Space, My Place.

Our Home, Our World
Choosing a Place to Live
Your Dream House
Tiny Homes vs Big Homes
The Problem with Housing
The Future of Housing

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You can download the lesson plan and the presentation at the end of the post!

The class starts by looking at and labelling four different types of accommodations: a houseboat, a block of flats, a chalet and a motorhome. Students take turns talking about one of them, discussing possible features that can be found in each one of them, e.g. a spacious kitchen, beautiful views, convenience, etc. Ask which one of them looks most like their house and which one they would choose to stay in for a short holiday.

Follow this short warm-up discussion by showing pictures and reading a short introduction to an article from Earth Homes Now on cave homes. Despite the text being short as it is, I reduced it even more for the sake of the class, focusing more on speaking rather than reading. After this brief introduction, discuss if students are surprised about the cave homes being still used now. Divide students into pairs/small groups and ask them to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living in a cave. This activity serves as an introduction to reading for gist in the next part.

Students return to the main room / their desks and begin individual work. They read the rest of the article on the pros and cons of living in the cave home. Elicit the answers (you can write them down) and check if any of the students’ ideas appeared in the text. There are four advantages and two disadvantages mentioned in the text: natural sound insulation, warm in the winter and cool in the summer, cheap to build, natural protection from intruders, but also the risk of collapsing and no natural light.

All Preply group lessons have some kind of focus on grammar. I decided to use it as a revision of comparatives. Students are introduced to comparatives in the next activity, reading for gist. Show six sentences, all containing comparatives and ask them to decide if the sentences are true (T), false (F) or the information isn’t given in the text. Then go over the rules and spelling of comparative forms. Practice the use of grammar by writing three sentences comparing living in a cave and living in a block of flats. I chose a block of flats, as almost everyone has some kind of experience living in such a place, but of course, feel free to change it as needed!