Saturday, November 7, 2009

500 Places to See ....Before They Die


There is a real LISTMANIA these days in Britain - it seems that every time I read the Guardian online there is a new list - best beach hideaways, best restaurants, best hotels.. the list is endless! But how can we use these lists in our teaching? Well, I recently came across a very nice article from the Guardian called 500 Places to See ..Before They Die on http://www.onestopenglish.com/ . This article is about a new guidebook for travellers focusing on sites which are most at risk from climate change and man - made interference.



The article comes in Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced versions and in addition to developing students´ reading skills, also encourages pupils to discuss the positive and negative implications of even more tourists visiting these destinations having read about them in the guide. We conclude this part by asking students to comment on the statement:

"The planet is poorer every time we allow something beautiful to die".

Here are the Intermediate and Advanced versions:

Intermediate

Advanced

After this disussion, I took my upper intermediate students to the computer room where I had them find the website for the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die, which is the original book written to introduce travellers to marvellous tourist destinations worldwide, and which has incidentally sold extremely well!

Students were divided into groups and then within the groups, they had to individually choose a continent each and then select the most beautiful, amazing, natural place from the options available to make a presentation to the groups.

A very nice activity which worked very well.

No comments:

Post a Comment