How do we generate language from a topic? – a practical example

Why are we here?

April – we discussed how the topic should be the starting point, NOT the language focus.

Everyone seemed to agree but then some people asked for a more practical example – so here we are!

Exactly how can a topic lesson be generated?

How can two or three fifty-word texts be enough to generate around five to six hours of teaching?

Well, here’s a step-by-step guide.

The first place to start might be with a text like this …

Or this …

As they say, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’.

Look at these two texts. What language could be generated from them?

Another place to start is with newspaper headlines.

The ambiguity of headlines like this make them rich pickings for language analysis.

• Who or what does the word youth refer to?• What is a jobs market?• How was / were the youth hit?• Who hit the youth?• What were they hit with?• What were the consequences of them being hit?

Even for fairly low-level students, headlines can still be an excellent source of language.

What language could you focus on from this headline with a low-level class?

Now to slightly longer texts …

Just at a word level, a text of this length is rich …

Here are some of the words I think I’d focus on …

We can pick up on some of the other lexical features such as collocations …

In the newspaper report, there was a rogue trader. Match the words on the left with the words on the right to make common business collocations:

1. bank a. adviser2. financial b. analyst3. public relations c. assistant4. market d. manager5. shop e. officer6. systems f. researcher

Here is another short text. Again, what vocabulary could you focus on?

And what about grammar?

A number of key language areas jump out at me when I see such texts. For example:

- tenses (especially the combinations of present simple, present perfect, past passive)

- comparisons (such as: more than, biggest, higher, earlier)

- referencing words (such as: like this, The, this kind of, these figures, they, etc.)

Size

doesn’t

matter!

Once you’ve picked out a particular grammar area, it’s simple enough to design an activity to give students more practice.

These phrases compare two or more things. Now complete these sentences with the phrases in the box.

1. My wife works for one of ______________ companies in the area.

2. ______________ twice as many people are unemployed now than a year ago.

3. The losses are ______________ first feared and the banks are confident in recovering the money.

4. Interest rates are _____________ than at any other time this year.

5. He started at ______________ position in the company but now he’s the chief executive.

more than the biggest the lowestnot as bad as higher

Think of the texts we’ve looked at so far. What else could you ask your students to do?

Discuss these questions in groups:

SPEAKING

1. Do you ever read business news?

2. What kind of business news do you find interesting?

3. What is the current situation of the stock market in your country or region?

4. What is the unemployment situation in your country?

5. Do you think retailers should make large profits? Why? Why not?

what you provide / produce location sales figures profit figures your plan for the next five years

You are the chief executive of a company. Prepare a two-minute presentation about your company and include the following information:

PROJECT

“What’s different from a normal coursebook?” I hear you ask!

Well, two main things:

and

The texts are bite-sized.

Language emerges from the topic, NOT the topic from the language.

So we can do the same with any common topic:

Travel

Politics

So, how do you create a topic-driven lesson?

1. Pick a topic.

2. Find (or write) short texts. These can be like newspaper articles or text types that fit the topic.

3. Then start looking for the language, NOT the other way around.

4. Design your activities.

5. Always have the topic at the front of your mind.

But can we do the same type of thing at low levels?

What language could you focus on here?

adjectivesarticlesprepositionsreference words – its, they

As for vocabulary, words like: hire, coast, crash and delicious