PASO 5: Análisis de sensibilidad
6.1 ASPECTOS TÉCNICOS
Summary
Topic: Learning a new language
Grammar: Advice, obligation and prohibition; past modals Listening: Ways of learning a new language
Speaking: Advice on how to learn a language
Communication worksheet 5B: Top tips for TV talent
shows Lead-in
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Tell students that you would like them to learn four new words. Explain that they are all concocted words, but you are challenging them to learn them as quickly as possible. Write the following words on the board with their definitions:tumberhop = a small wheel
yepster = someone who loves biscuits hendore = to sleep on a sofa
dripty = tired and angry
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Give students a minute to learn the words. Tell them that they can use any technique they like.•
Remove the words from the board. Call out the definitions and ask students to write down the correct word for each definition.•
Check answers as a class. Invite students who got five correct answers to tell the rest of the class about the technique they used to learn the words.Exercise 1 $ 1•24 page 58
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If you used the lead-in activity, you could continue by asking other students to contribute their ideas on how to learn vocabulary, and then expand the discussion to include other areas of language learning.•
Ask students to write their ideas on the board.•
Play the recording and then ask a few students to tick the ideas on the board which are mentioned in the recording.Audio script
TV presenter Imagine knowing so many languages that you can communicate with almost anyone in the world. Impossible, you think? Then you’d better think again. Sixteen-year-old New Yorker Tim Doner has already mastered an incredible twenty- three languages and is planning to learn many more. Here’s our education correspondent, Susie Green, to explain how he does it. Susie?
Susie Well, Tim Doner is proof that you don’t need to spend your childhood in different countries or have multilingual parents to be a brilliant language learner. He has never lived outside the USA, and he didn’t speak in any language except English until he started French at school when he was eight. So what exactly does it take to learn as many languages as Tim? Well, you need to be fairly intelligent to match Tim’s
achievements – although he assures me that he’s no genius in his other subjects at school. More importantly, you have to put in a lot of hard work – several hours a day, in Tim’s case. You needn’t have formal language lessons, although they can be a great help, of course. Tim has learned the basics of lots of languages through grammar books and flashcard applications on his phone. After that, the critical thing is practice. // Tim usually practises between ten and fifteen different languages every day. He chats with bilingual friends at school and on the internet, and with random people from all over the world in the New York streets and subways. You don’t have to have perfect grammar to hold a conversation, but when it comes to speaking practice, you mustn’t be shy. According to Tim, you ought to follow your interests when you’re practising languages, as this helps you to stay motivated. Tim likes world music, so he often learns the words of foreign songs. He’s fascinated by current affairs, so he reads the news in at least eight different languages every morning. He also loves the soap operas on American TV, but knows that he shouldn’t waste his time on them. Instead he watches DVDs of foreign soap operas, so he can practise his languages and have his soap opera fix at the same time.
There’s really nothing that Tim does to learn languages that we can’t all do. In fact, I must stop making excuses for my own terrible language skills and start studying!
Exercise 2 $ 1•24 page 58
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Ask students to read the sentences and think about the information they should listen for.•
With a stronger class, ask students to try to remember if the things were mentioned in the programme before they listen again. With a weaker class, tell them to concentrate on the first four sentences and pause the recording after the first half (//). Give students time to compare their ideas in pairs before playing the second half of the recording.•
Check answers as a class.1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8
Language note: Advice, obligation and prohibition We use the following modal verbs to talk about:
Advice: should / shouldn’t, ought to, had better (not) Obligation:
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must to imply obligation felt by the speaker•
have to to imply external obligation•
need to to imply external obligationLack of obligation: don’t have to, don’t need to / needn’t Prohibition: mustn’t
Exercise 3 page 58
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Check that students understand the meaning of advice,obligation and prohibition.
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Give students a few minutes to read the sentences in exercise 2 again and think about the functions of the modal verbs in each sentence.•
Check answers as a class.a ought (not) to, had better (not) b must c need to d mustn’t e don’t need to, needn’t
Grammar reference and practice 5.1 Workbook page 117 1 1 must work 2 needn’t work 3 shouldn’t work
4 should work 5 mustn’t work 6 have to work
2 1 We have to pay for this language course by Wednesday.
2 You should listen to an English radio station for fifteen minutes every day.
3 Students mustn’t use their mobile phones in the classroom.
4 You don’t need to live in France in order to learn French.
5 They shouldn’t go out tonight.
6 We must phone our cousins this evening.
Exercise 4 page 58
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Remind students that they will need to think about the function of each verb and to understand the sentence as a whole in order to choose the correct option.•
Check answers as a class.1 shouldn’t, need to 2 must, don’t need to 3 needn’t, had better 4 ought to, don’t have to
Extra activity
Write the word GHOTI on the board. Explain that this is actually a strange way of spelling a word that students know. Then read out the following clues:
Pronounce the ‘gh’ as in the word ‘enough’. Pronounce the ‘o’ as in the word ‘women’ Pronounce the ‘ti’ as in the word ‘pollution’.
Students work in pairs to guess the word. After one minute, ask students for their guesses. The word is fish. Exercise 5 page 59
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Put students into three groups and ask each group to read one of the texts and then tell the rest of the class about the advantages and / or disadvantages of the language method. Encourage students to skim the texts to find the advantages and the disadvantages of each method.•
With a stronger class, ask students to find the answers to the following questions:What language did Larissa try to learn? (Italian)
Who spent twenty-three hours in total learning a language?
(Richard)
Why was it important for Felix to walk outside? (It was
supposed to get oxygen to his brain.)
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Students then discuss their own language learning experiences in pairs.Language note: Past modal verbs
We use the following modal verbs to talk about regret and necessity in the past:
Regret
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should have / shouldn’t have + past participle•
ought to have + past participleNecessity
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had to + infinitive•
needed to + infinitive Lack of necessity•
didn’t have to + infinitive: it was unnecessary (and itprobably did not happen)
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needn’t have + past participle: it was unnecessary but ithappened
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didn’t need to + infinitive: it was unnecessary; it mayhave happened or may not have happened Exercise 6 page 59
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Give students a few minutes to read the texts again, focus on the underlined phrases and answer the questions. Elicit that all the texts are about past experiences and therefore the writers use past modals.•
Check answers as a class.1 shouldn’t have, ought to have, should have
2 needed to, had to
3 didn’t have to, didn’t need to
4 needn’t have
Grammar reference and practice 5.2 Workbook page 117 1 1 shouldn’t have hidden 2 needn’t have driven
3 should have brought 4 didn’t have to make 5 had to leave 6 ought to have woken
Exercise 7 page 59
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Ask students to read the sentences and think about whether they express regret, necessity or lack of necessity in the past.•
Do the first sentence together with the class and point out that everyone becomes the subject of the sentence.•
Students then work in pairs to do the exercise. 1 In my first job, everyone had to speak good Spanish.2 I needed to work hard to improve my language skills.
3 I didn’t have to take any exams.
4 I ought not to have given up Spanish at school. / I ought to have continued doing Spanish at school.
5 We didn’t need to learn a modern language after the age of fourteen.
6 I needn’t have learned Latin to a high level; it’s never been useful to me.
7 My parents should have encouraged me to study modern languages.
Exercise 8 page 59
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For question 1, students can think about the grammar, pronunciation and alphabet of the language, e.g. Is ita tonal language (like Chinese or Thai)? Is it a language with a very large vocabulary? Does it follow strict rules? etc.
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If there are students in your class who speak a different language, e.g. because they have lived abroad, or have parents whose first language is different, ask them to tell the rest of the class about the language and how they learned it.•
Circulate and monitor, helping with vocabulary if necessary.Students’ own answers
Learning outcome
Ask students: What have you learned today? What can you do
now? and elicit answers: I can understand a radio programme about someone who can speak many different languages. I can talk about obligation, prohibition and advice. I can use past modals. I can discuss different ways of learning languages.