SPEAKING
These are global justice topics that people really want to talk about: stopping deforestation, making technology fair, refugees around the world, West Africa after Ebola ...
And these powerful images, topical articles, quizzes, infographics, balanced arguments, photo stories and staged Ready lessons will ensure learners are actively engaged.
1/ One of the best ways to get anyone to talk is to present them with a situation that's clearly not fair, so they are moved to tell someone else about it. Get a group of learners to do one of the Quizzes (left) in pairs, to see how much they know (about oil, feminism, Africa, banks etc.), then get them to check their own answers with the accompanying infographic or article and discover some more facts they didn't know to share.
2/ Good photos can convey a huge amount of powerful emotion and information. Get pairs or small groups to look at, and discuss one of the Photo essays to describe them to others, 'tell the story' through the pictures or imagine the lives and stories behind the photos (of Multicultural Canada, Afghan Women Rangers, the Norway Ring of Peace, Refugees in Calais or people and places in Tibet, India or Gaza etc).
3/ Get learners to develop their Higher Order Thinking Skills and ability to form a coherent, cohesive argument with the Arguments. They can read the arguments to prepare and make notes, then argue in pairs about whether social media is bad for us, if 16 years olds should vote, a possible maximum wage or whether celebrities should promote charities etc). Task repetition is a good idea here, after post-task error correction, as learners should improve each time they argue.
4/ If you want to improve pronunciation with powerful, authentic short phrases, try Radical Phonology - making protest banners about really important topics, working on the sounds, stress and intonation, then chanting as a meaningful drill.
