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subject to review, alteration or abandonment in classroom practice.
Anyone is welcome to use this stuff, but copyright remains with
Thor May. Feedback, positive or negative, is very welcome.ESL materials & ideas developed in Korea
Popup English
Topical Texts to Learn - My City
a) Text: My City
____ [Sydney] _______ is a city of about ___ [four] ____ million people.
The climate is _______ [mild] ____ and the air is usually ___ [fresh] ___.
_____ [Sydney] _____ is well-known as a _____ [pleasant] _____ place to live, with _______ [fine beaches] _______ [good shopping] ______.
However, it is also a ____ [major industrial city] ____, with ___ [heavy traffic] and many ______ [factories and offices] ______ .
b) Procedure
1. If the class has good enough English, prime them by asking how they would describe their city a) to a tourist; b) to a businessman; c) to a foreign journalist looking for an interesting angle on the city.
2. Give the class the incomplete cloze text. Sample answers may be written in from the teacher's home town for a slow class, but be careful they don't simply copy the teacher's answer into their own text!
3. Give the class a jumbled list of words that can all be used somewhere in the cloze. The list should be much larger than the available empty slots. Make sure all the words are understood. Elicit other words to add to the list.
4. Ask students to fill in the cloze.
5. Ask students to deliver the text orally to a neighbour. When they speak they should be looking at the other person. It is OK to look down quickly, memorize a phrase, look up, and THEN speak. Students should be coaxed to speak with natural rhythm and intonation.
6. Better students may be asked to construct a tour and visit itinerary for an international visitor. The will have to decide on how many days, where to visit and in what order and why, transport details such as bus numbers and times, and a time frame for each place visited.
" Topical Texts - My City" copyrighted to Thor May 2001; all rights reservedback to barebones index