TED Talk lesson plan: fun interesting listening, speaking, vocab, all you need!

This lesson plan / worksheet combines English Language Arts, ESL, listening (challenging your students’ vocabulary and comprehension abilities), speaking, encouraging your students to have dialogues, use functional language by way of discussion and debating, some informational reading with useful new vocabulary and some vocab exercises. You can extend each part as much as you see fit but my advice would be to focus heavily on the open, comprehension and debate questions; ESL students rarely get the chance to practice speaking naturally enough and this is exactly one of those opportunities.

It's suitable for active classes, best for older teenagers and adults, ESL level B1 and upwards ideally.

You can use this worksheet / lesson without much further preparation, you might want to read the transcript or watch the video beforehand but seeing as how every exercise is fully explained and where appropriate the answer key is included, even that is really up to you and how comfortable you feel with a bit of improvisation…

There are various topics addressed in this TED Talk despite the impression the title might give and as such there is some useful real-life content, functional language, topic-related vocab, that students can instantly apply in the debating activities.

You get a fully designed lesson that provides you with content, exercises and activities that will last at least 120 minutes and needs no preparation; there are 16 PDF pages loaded with various activities plus three answer / key pages for you as the teacher. (If you go into every detail and don’t skip any of the ideas raised, extra reading, etc. you could easily stretch it into two, three or possibly even more sessions, depending on how much your students are into the subject).

What you should get out of this lesson plan is improving general speaking, but more specifically interactive communication by discussing some topics in detail related to some examples from real life; getting over the “embarrassment-hurdle” with interesting activities which could easily move on to go deeper into specific topics thus improving specific thematic vocabulary skills, but also practicing general conversation as well as more informal register just by exploring other peoples’ and maybe (hopefully) some students’ ideas and interpretations. In any case, try to get a dynamic and interactive conversation going! Whether you're an ESL or native English speaker, this worksheet is perfect for anyone looking to elevate their language abilities.

So, put your science glasses on, get your synapses ignited, be surprised by some mind-blowing facts about our brains and most of all, have fun - that's the best condition for learning effectively!

If you enjoy it, which I'm sure you'll do, tell us what you think in the reviews! Namaste! ☼♥

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