49 ESL Conversation Games & Activities - Jackie Bolen 2020
Conversation class lesson plans
These are lessons that I would use for 1-3 hour classes with very high level, motivated students, ranging from 1-1 to 30 or more students. If you have a larger class, you'll have to break it into smaller groups of 3-6 for discussion purposes. Remember, the goal is to make your classes as student-centered as possible so you want to make sure that your students are doing most of the talking instead of you.
For higher level classes, I also use authentic material instead of things from ESL textbooks because it helps train my students for real-life and it's more interesting to choose from things currently in the news for me and the students. While authentic material can be a bit challenging, you can help your students by pre-teaching any difficult, but important vocabulary. You can also partly rewrite authentic material to make it easier by making it shorter, removing difficult grammatical constructions or substituting vocabulary words that you think your students won't know.
I don't recommend using these lessons without adaptation because they might not be suitable for your students (they are mostly Korea based), but you can see the basic format of a lesson for higher level students.
Agricultural Subsidies
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20131028000778
1. Warm-up
A. Do you think a lot about where your food comes from?
B. Would you buy organic food or locally grown food, even if it were 50% more expensive?
C. Would you ever buy cheap imported rice instead of Korean rice?
D. How has the agricultural industry changed in Korea in the past 50 years?
2. Vocabulary
A. plummet (verb)
B. commodity (noun)
C. indigenous (adjective)
D. mitigate (verb)
3. Questions from Reading
A. What are the differences in the agricultural industry in Korea between 1970 and 2010?
B. Does Korea have high or low subsidy levels compared to other countries?
C. In the long-term, do agricultural subsidies help or hurt farmers?
D. What does Chung Hoe-Sang think about this situation?
E. Why do some people argue that the agricultural industry should not be treated like other industries?
F. What are the 2 middle paths?
4. Discussion questions
A. Do you think that the agricultural industry should be treated like other industries by being made to compete in the free market, without subsidies? Why or why not?
B. Is there a cultural or historical reason (or another kind of reason) why subsidies for farmers are so high in Korea?
C. Why are there so few young farmers in Korea? How could attitudes towards farming as a job change?
D. Which of the middle paths is a better option do you think?
E. Is it necessary for Korea to be rice self-sufficient?
5. Choose one option. Prepare a 3 minute persuasive speech. We will ask you some follow-up questions based on what you said.
In your opinion, what is the best option?
A. No subsidies for farmers in Korea. They should have to compete in the free market.
B. Create high border taxes on imported food, resulting in higher consumer prices for Koreans.
C. Lower border taxes and give money directly to farmers, lowering consumer prices for Koreans.
D. Provide farmers with property tax breaks and low income taxes.
E. Some other option . . .
6. Let's work on speaking more quickly.
Take your 3 minute speech and you now have only 2 minutes, but you must include all the same information. Next, you have only 1 minute. Can you include all the same information but in a much shorter amount of time? Challenge yourself!