• "Using the Idea of Debate through the Internet" by Takayuki Nakanishi

• "Your Favourite Means of Travelling and Why the Tube?" by Andrzej Zychla

• "A Letter from a Holiday Place (A Group Poster)" by Marina Gurbo

USING THE IDEA OF DEBATE THROUGH THE INTERNET
by Takayuki Nakanishi
Ibaraki University,
Mito, Japan
tnakanis@hotmail.com

Level: Pre-Intermediate and above

Time: 90 minutes

Aims:

- To be able to enunciate English words at the sentence level in way that a partner will be able to understand your opinion.

- To broaden their perspectives from different point of views

- To be able to find what you look for on the Web.

Technical requirements: Computers with the Internet connection

Notes:

This activity uses the idea of debate, two parties with opposing views (pros and cons) about a topic. It is not easy to figure out what to do with the innovative CALL classrooms and computer equipped classrooms. This is one of the ideas you can use when you are in that kind of situation. You can also assign parts of the activity for self-study. This activity is designed to cover reading and oral skills. It works if you use this activity in a group rather than pair work at first.

Preparation:

It is often the case that students don’t know what debate is and how it works. It makes sense to teach the system of debate beforehand to avoid confusion. It probably works best if you explain it in Japanese. Here are the useful websites for teachers to use.

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~kurapy/debate.html, where the rules of debate are explicitly explained in Japanese.

http://www.kings.edu/debate/rules.htm, with debate format from American Debate Association Rules (in English).

Procedure:

1. Choose a topic for debate (5-10 mins)

You can choose almost any topics you want, such as death penalty (capital punishment), greenhouse, school uniform, smoking, gun control and so on. You can also let students decide the topic. (It works well if you choose a topic which they are familiar with at first.)

2. Students discuss it in pairs. (10 mins)

For example, if they choose school uniform as a topic, they will talk about things like "Is it good to have school uniform or not? Why? What is the common problem you encounter if you have school uniform?" Students sometimes don’t know what to talk about, so teacher should give some questions to start with. In addition, almost all of the junior-high and high school students in Japan wear a school uniform. The teacher has to remind them of the days when they wore a school uniform and what they thought of their friends who went to different schools with no school uniform.

3. Class brainstorming (15-20 mins)

Once they finished talking in pairs, brainstorm the good points and bad points of the topic as a class. The teacher takes notes of what students discussed on the white board. In this phase, they will see different opinions.

4. Go to the website (20-30 mins)

Go to http://www.debatabase.org/. Suppose you choose “school uniform” as a topic, tell students to type the topic in the search space. Then, you will see the topic “school uniform” and subtopic “Should school require their students to wear a school uniform?” Clicking on it will lead you to the next page where you will see pros and cons about the topic. Tell students to read them and gather different opinions. If you scroll down and go to “Further discussion”, you will be able to find more opinions on this topic from around the world. Please give them ample time to read the entire opinions so that they will be able to grasp the flow of the debate. They might need a dictionary to comprehend some of the words. They may also go to other websites if they think they need more information on something to support their opinion. One of the main focuses in this activity is that they will see many opinions and can go to other websites to look for supporting arguments right on the spot if they have the internet. You could also go to http://www.debate-central.org/ to see other topics. In this website, you can see past debates topics dealt with from 1996 to 2002.

5. Check with the class (20-30 mins)

Try to figure out what they can add to the list of the things they brainstormed. Discuss them with the class if necessary and see which party has better arguments.

Conclusion

It may be a good idea to teach students a list of vocabulary or phrases they need to express their opinions.

A. I agree,,,

B. I disagree,,,

C. I understand your point, however,,,

Students enjoy this activity once they are familiar with the task. What they enjoy is that they have to think about the topic and not only learn English, but also learn to see things in many different perspectives.

Please note that you need to get to know your students and familiarize them with the pair and group work before you try this activity. It is also difficult for low level students to do this activity.

It sometimes takes a lot of time for students to read the parts of pros and cons about a topic. Therefore, it is very helpful if you make a list of vocabulary items they need to read the parts of pros and cons when you try this activity for the first time. As a further activity, ask your students to do research about a topic and come up with more reasons to support their position after the class. They can gain more knowledge about the topic if you try to discuss it again in a group. The one who lost in the previous class might have a better argument this time. You will be surprised to see how much information they gather.

YOUR FAVOURITE MEANS OF TRAVELLING AND WHY THE TUBE?
http://www.thetube.com
by Andrzej Zychla
Zielona Gora University, NKJO,
Zielona Gora, Poland
zychla@poczta.onet.pl

Level: intermediate and above.

Time: 45-90 minutes (depending on the choice of activities).

Aims:

• to teach students how to choose suitable keywords for Internet-based searches
• to teach students how to find information on a webpage making use of its main section and SEARCH THE SITE facility
• to teach students some basic facts about London and London Underground
• to teach students how to extract factual information from authentic texts (through scanning)

Technical requirements: At least one computer per a group of 2 students, Internet access.

Knowledge: Students should possess basic typing/word-processing skills and know how to start search engines and make use of the basic operators.

Necessary preparation: The teacher should ensure that all the computers are correctly networked and have access to the Internet. As most webpages are updated, it is advisable that the teacher actually checks whether the answers suggested below are still correct.

Possible problems: English on the Tube webpage may at first 'overwhelm' students but the teacher should tell them that they will be able to answer all/most of the questions even though they may have problems understanding everything.

Procedure:

Pre-stage activity:

The teacher asks students about Internet search engines they use or know about (some links can be written on the blackboard or, better still, made available in an electronic form so that students can further explore them at home). The teacher explains that during the class students will be asked to find answers to a number of questions making use of the Google search engine.

Note: As each new question depends considerably on the answer(s) obtained from the previous one(s), questions should be asked (or shown to students) one by one. Before anything is filled into the Google window, students discuss and decide on the keywords to be entered.

While-stage activities:

1. The teacher demonstrates some of the possibilities offered by search engines (the two particularly useful for the purposes of this lesson are: varying the sequence of search words and making use of quotation marks while searching for phrases). The teacher presents the following list of questions gradually (one by one) and asks students to suggest the keywords (see the underlined words in the questions below). Students should be encouraged to experiment with varying the sequence of keywords and using quotation marks around different phrases and see how these can affect the results. As the questions are interrelated, some of the key words that were used in previous searches should be re-used while answering the remaining questions:

a) Where is the world's oldest underground? (Answer: In London)

b) What do locals call it? (Answer: The Tube)

c) What is the busiest station? (Answer: Victoria)

d) How many passengers travel through it every year? At peak hour? (Answer: 76.5 mln / 30,000+ at peak hour [official tube statistics say 30,000 while other webpages suggest up to 34,000])

e) What was the first line opened on London Underground? (Answer: Metropolitan [Railway])

2. Once all the answers have been found and discussed, the teacher asks students to go to The Tube Official Webpage and distributes (writes on the blackboard/sends to students by e-mail) a list of questions they are to find the answers to on the webpage. The webpage contains authentic material, but as most of the questions are factual, students should be able to find all the figures and names rather quickly. Students can either try to use the keyword technique (there is a very crude SEARCH THIS SITE facility on the webpage) or access the main sections on the page (can be found at the top of the webpage).

• How many passenger journeys were made in 1999-2000? (Answer: 927 million, see: history).
• Are there any maps of the underground on the webpage? (Answer: Yes, one of them can even be accessed with a mobile phone)
• Which section gives answers to the commonest questions concerning the Tube? (Answer: FAQs)
• Where can you find the basic historical information concerning the Tube? (Answer: history)
• In which section can you find news articles about London Underground? (Answer: press)
• What jobs are currently offered to people thinking about working for London Underground? (Answer: Customer Services Assistant, see: jobs)
• How much will an adult pay to travel from Victoria Station to All Saints Station? (Answer: two pounds, see: tubeplanner)

3. Students work in pairs and write their own questions concerning The Tube (it is enough if each pair prepares 2-3 questions). During that stage the teacher should monitor the work and help students with their questions. Then they exchange their questions with other students and try to find answers to the questions written by other pairs. Those who finish the activity too quickly might be asked either to prepare even more questions or underline keywords in the questions they have answered and check if those could lead to correct answers (using both Google and SEARCH THIS SITE facilities).

Post-stage activity:

Some of the early-finishers may also enjoy reading the incredible trivia concerning the Tube and London public transport system.

Next class:

The teacher may encourage students to try to explore the webpage at home and check how much they can remember during the following class. The following questions might be used for quiz purposes:

• How many stations are there? (Answer: 275)
• What is the busiest station on London Underground? (Answer: Victoria)
• How many passenger journeys are made every day? (Answer: three million)
• Why doesn't London Underground operate non-stop? (Answer: there are only two tunnels, so a few-hour break is necessary for repair purposes)
• How long is the network? (Answer: over 408 km or 253 miles of railway)

A LETTER FROM A HOLIDAY PLACE (A GROUP POSTER)
by Marina Gurbo
LATE, ICT in ELT SIG coordinator
Riga, Latvia
marina.gurbo@izm.gov.lv

Level: Intermediate and above

Time: at least 4 periods (40 mins each)

Objectives:

- revising vocabulary related to weather and holidays (adjectives)

- searching and reading for specific information

- revising Past Simple, Past Continuous, Present Perfect, Present Perfect, Present Perfect Continuous

- writing a letter describing a stay at a holiday resort (informal)

Resources required: computers (one per 2 students) with the Internet connection, websites, Microsoft PowerPoint, a multimedia projector

Other resources required for letter writing: a large poster sheet for one group (min. A1 format), scissors, glue, markers.

Knowledge: Students should be able to type the URLs, use search engine and make computer presentations.

URLs: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/theme/islands/islands_index.htm; http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/; http://www.wunderground.com

Tip for teachers:

If you are teaching with Enterprise 3 (Pre-Intermediate), this project may be a good follow-up for Unit 3 "Around the World" (pp. 14-17) and you may start with Stage 2. In addition, you may use Target Vocabulary 2 by Peter Watcyn- Jones, Penguin Books 1994 (Section 3: Extract from holiday brochures, p.51). It will help students to revise holiday vocabulary and build up a list of adjectives describing places, weather, people, food, atmosphere, their experience and so on.

The procedure:

Stage 1 (offline):

1. The teacher explains to students that they are going to write a group letter (4-5 people in a group) and present it as a class poster. Before they do that, they will have to search for information about their particular holiday place, and this time they are all going to different islands. They will be given a worksheet to complete with required information and then they will have to summarize their findings and present them to their peers as a PowerPoint presentation.

Tip for teachers:

Lonely Planet provides information on Tasmania, Galapagos, Saba, Baffin, Sark, Mauritius, Kefallonia, Bahrain. I would suggest teachers offer students to choose between Saba, Mauritius or Bahrain, as there is the most information on one website and additional search is not required. Of course, more advanced students can choose other places and study the links Lonely Planet provides for additional information.

2. The teacher asks students to remember their previous experiences of travelling to a particular resort place, asking them questions which require using descriptive words:

• Where did you go? What is this place like?
• Where did you stay? What was it like?
• What was the weather like?
• What was the food like?
• What were the local people like?
• Did you visit any sites (palaces, museums, parks and so on)? What were they like?
• What were the beaches like?
• Did you have a good time?

Stage 2 (online):

1. The teacher asks students to split into groups (4-5 people) and distributes worksheets (one per a student) to be completed. See the worksheet.

2. Students go to the computers and start their search (they may assign each group member to search for particular information to save time).

3. After students have completed the worksheet, they join as a group to summarize their findings and to work on a PP presentation design. Teacher may give them the following guideline sample for slides:

Slide 1- Title, students' names
Slide 2 - General information
Slides 3-4 - Attractions
Slide 5-7 - Activities
Slide 8-9 - Events
Slide 10 - When to go
Slide 11 - Facts for travelers
Slide 12 - By students' choice

Tip for teachers:

Students may want to include pictures into their presentations. This will require additional time (for searching or scanning). Students also should be reminded about copyright issues. The teacher should stress the importance of text itself (they will use it for further writing) and encourage students not to pay too much attention to visuals this time.

As for the text, students may summarize the information they got using their own words or they may use some vocabulary and phrases from the website. It may be useful to refer students to Target Vocabulary 2 to check on expressions usually used in holiday brochures.

4. When the presentations are ready, students present them as a group. The teacher should spend some time giving feedback on the content, use of language, grammar mistakes.

Stage 3 (offline)

Writing a letter from a holiday place (a group poster):

1. Teacher asks students to work in groups, imagine themselves at that particular place (they presented) and start drafting their letter. At this stage, the teacher can revise the usage of Past Simple, Past Continuous, Present Perfect and Present Perfect by asking students questions like:

1. Where are you now?
2. Where are you staying?
3. What is the weather like?
4. When did you come?
5. How long have you been staying there?
6. What have you done or been doing so far?
7. What have you done/ visited/explored/ yet?
8. How did you like it?
9. Did you have a good or bad experience/ an incident?
10. What were you doing when it happened? OR What was happening at that moment?

2. The teacher may give students a paragraph plan below to write a letter:

Introduction:

Para 1: greetings, say where you are

Main body:

Para 2: say where you are staying, when you came, what the weather is like, your general impressions

Para 3: sights you have seen/activities you have done, your impressions of that, interesting facts

Para 4: food you have tasted/description of good/bad experiences

Conclusion:

Para 5: end the letter

3. When students have completed their drafts and reviewed them for mistakes, the teacher gives them a poster sheet and markers. They will write their final draft on a poster. (To ensure using appropriate tenses and vocabulary the teacher may create his/her own Sample verbs sheet and Sample adjectives sheet. Students will cut the given words, glue them to a poster and write all other words in handwriting).

4. Students fix their posters to the wall.

5. The teacher may use the next period for the presentation of posters and feedback on grammar and language problems.

Worksheet

Theme: Islands

 Sample adjectives sheet:

Sample verbs sheet