The world is still buzzing with excitement about the 2024 Olympics. It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t know what happened in Paris during the games. There’s been a lot of discussion related to sports, so why not engage your students in a conversation about health? One interesting topic to explore is whether Olympians are as healthy as we perceive them to be.
It’s hard to choose an evergreen topic about the Paris Olympics with so many things happening there. I came across an article by The Guardian about the health of Olympians and the challenges they encounter after retirement. As the article was a bit complex, I used ChatGPT to transform it into a CAE Reading Part 8 task with a brief vocabulary discussion.
If you are currently teaching CAE groups and need a break from the coursebook, but still want to prepare them for the exams, scroll to the end of the post to access the presentation and the worksheet with the teacher’s notes.
Start the class by asking students about their own definition of health. This question is interesting because it may be interpreted in many different ways. Medical students may provide an official definition of health, while other students may discuss physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Then proceed by asking whether being fit equals being healthy. Engage the students in larger group discussions supported by personal examples.
Before delving into the full article, read its title Olympians are super fit. That doesn’t mean we’re healthy followed by a short introduction and prompt students to think about some health challenges that Olympians may confront during their transition from professional athletic careers to retirement.
I used ChatGPT to split the article into four shorter texts. Each text depicts the firsthand experiences of four female athletes as they transitioned from their professional careers to retirement. The athletes featured are Laura Zeng (gymnast), Katie Spada (swimmer), Alexi Pappas (runner), and Jessica Parratto (diver). In the first task, students quickly search for answers to the question posed at the beginning of the class. They skim through the texts and identify the challenges each woman faced after retirement.
As you may have noticed, this task closely resembles the CAE Reading Part 8, where students are required to match people to ten questions. The texts are quite similar, so for brevity, I removed two questions. Please review the answers and underline the evidence in the texts.
So far, students have not been introduced to any specific vocabulary in order to replicate an official exam task. However, it might be beneficial for them to expand their vocabulary, therefore you could instruct them to match bold words with their definitions, and then use these words to answer five questions related to health and sports.
At the end of the class, students work in pairs and answer health and sports questions. Monitor their activity and provide feedback at the end of the task.
If the topic of the Olympics is still making waves in your classroom, why not try this class activity and discover what your students think about the importance of sports and maintaining a healthy lifestyle?
Did you catch any of the Olympics? What are your thoughts on whether being fit equals being healthy?
