Find one student who loves the Use of English. I dare you. Most of my students understand the rules of it and there are times when they can do it very well, but still deep inside, they despise it. I decided to look at some free online resources and transform one of the Use of English texts into a lesson, resulting in this plan about motorbike stunt riders.
One day, as I was scrolling through the deepest depths of the Internet, I found a funny yet relatable Tweet by Charlie’s lessons. It made me laugh because it is so true – some of the texts found in the textbooks or in the exams are so boring that they could be used to induce comas. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
I have been meaning to prepare another Use of English lesson plan and decided to use one of the free resources provided by the Cambridge English website. The rest of the exam can be found in the B2 Sample Paper 1. I have previously used some of their tasks, one of them being B2 – Incredible Vegetables. This time let’s revise some vocabulary related to unusual and dangerous jobs with the main focus being on motorbike stunt riders. You can find the presentation, the worksheet and the teacher’s notes at the end of the post.
Commence the class by showing six pictures of jobs which are unusual and relatively dangerous. Students need to discuss what they may have in common and also discuss the names of these professions (skydiving instructor, storm chaser, motorbike stunt rider, underwater welder, high-rise window washer, bomb squad technician). This is followed by ranking these jobs from the most to the least dangerous and a discussion about which of these jobs the students would be interested in doing.
Present students with the first sentence of the Use of English Part 2 and ask them to think of the job that is being described and the words that are missing in this sentence. Of course, the topic of the class is motorbike stunt riders, which students should be able to guess from the word trick.
I work as a _________ – that is, I do tricks on my __________ at shows.
Before showing the rest of the text, ask students to discuss if they believe that this job is dangerous and whether the people who do this need any type of qualifications or special skills that would make their job easier. Once everyone had the time to discuss the answers to these questions, show the rest of the task. Students read the text quickly, omitting the gaps, and checking the answers to the previously discussed questions. As a group, discuss if students were surprised by the answer that the writer’s qualification in mechanical engineering helped him do this job more efficiently.
I thought that before getting into the exam task, it could be beneficial to remind students of the rules of the FCE Use of English Part 2 and elicit some of the most commonly mentioned words. Tell students that they need to complete the text by putting only one word in the gaps, these words can range from modal and auxiliary verbs to relative pronouns, articles, etc. Students look at examples of some words and divide them into different categories. Of course, the list is much longer than the one shown in class, therefore you can also ask students to complete the table with some of their own examples.
Now as a group, look at the exam task once again and think of the types of missing words. One of the strategies is that students don’t need to read the whole text but rather focus on separate sentences and analyse their structure, the words that can be found before and after the gap and the tenses used before. Look at the example – sentence (0) – I work ___ a motorbike stunt rider. You can elicit that in this case, we need a preposition that is typically used when we talk about jobs (as). Stronger groups could try to tackle this task on their own and think of the types of missing words. With some weaker groups, you could help and elicit the names of the types of missing words to guide the students in the right direction.
Since the students have already had some time to analyse the gaps, you can give them an additional five minutes to complete the task with appropriate missing words. Before checking the task as a group, you could first put them into pairs to compare the answers. This could lead to some good discussions and also boost students’ confidence in this difficult task.
The class ends with a pair discussion about students’ current jobs. Students tell each other about what they do and the qualifications and skills they need to complete their tasks. Then they think about other professions which could benefit from their qualifications and skills. Elicit a few answers from different pairs and finish by providing students with speaking feedback.
I think that all students could benefit from this lesson, as it shows them how to correctly think about this task and even if they are unsure of some answers, they can use some of the words from their vocabulary list. Click the links below to download the presentation and the worksheet with the teacher’s notes included at the end of it.
What do you do? What qualifications and skills do you need to do your job well?
Thanks so much for kindly sharing this lesson.
As with all of your topics, and hand picked resources, this one was very useful for giving my younger and older students practice using new vocabulary.
Much appreciated! 🙂