The news

Hi everyone,

I'm sharing a set of activities I created to work with a group of C1 students on the use of passive voice in the context of news. I hope you find it useful.

Warm up: Students share their opinions. Whole class.

How important is it to be informed?
What is the role of the newspaper in society?
What comes to mind when you hear the word "news"? 
What's in the news these days?
Which source of news do you think is best?

Show them the headlines below. Do they realte to their answers?

Activity 1: Mini debate. 

Devide the class in 4 groups. Each of them is going to defend a source of information. They will have 5 minutes to generate arguments to defend theirs and to attact the others'.

The options are: Television, Radio, Internet and Newspaper.

Activity 2: Understanding and grammar discovery.

Activity 3: Once they understood and practiced the use of passive voice, have them invent facts about a story in order to apply the structure. Using the headlines seen in the first activity as a starting point, they have to come up with 2 or 3 sentences.

Closure: Students read this article taken from breakingnewsenglish.com and write a short report based on what they have read, seen and heard about the virus. Finally, they will read it to the class to see if they have similar ideas.

As a follow up: My students prepared a 5-to-10-minute presentation on the most shocking news they remembered for the following class. They had to select one event they vividly recalled and describe the context in which it took place, why they found it shocking and which was the impact it had in the community.

BTW, I should have recorded them, they were great.

Here's the worksheet.

What do you think?

Stay tuned,
Claudio

Passive Songs

I'm sharing an activity for B1 students to practice passive voice through songs. In this activity, they have to read active sentences and identify the correct passive version. After they choose, they listen to the audio in order to check.  I hope you find it useful.



Here's the worksheet and the audio.










Once they finish with the songs in the worksheet, they listen to the last 5 segments and do the same process, only this time they provide the passive sentences. The teacher may have to write the active sentence on the board.

Just in case, here you have the lyrics:

1- She takes me away to that special place. (I am taken away to that special place by her).
2- You shook me all night long. (I was shaken all night long by you).
3- You wrote your name right on my back. (Your name was written right on my back by you)
4- See the world in green and blue. (The world is seen in green and blue).
5- It wears her out. (She is worn out by it).

As a follow up I would definitely play jeopardy! You have some examples in my previous post on passive voice.

Can you think of other songs with passive voice?

I await your comments,
Claudio

Passive voice

I will share a set of activities I have used with different groups and levels in order to practice the use of passive voice.



A first activity could be the following:

Combine the words from the box to make sentences in passive voice in simple present. You get to choose the verb. Feel free to create any other example or use any other country or product.

Coffee Chocolate Perfumes Cars Pizza Meat Rice Celebrities Watches

United States Italy Switzerland France China Uruguay England Egypt Japan

Eg: Great meat is eaten in Uruguay.
Many celebrities are found in the United States.

Write at least 5 more examples:

1. _______________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________
3. _______________________________________________
4. _______________________________________________
5. _______________________________________________

Jeopardy time! Always effective, always fun. Who doesn't like competitions? I personally love this kind of game as a teacher and as a student.


General culture! I adapted the first activity from bogglesworldesl.com and developed the second myself. 

Jeopardy 1
Jeopardy 2

This is a great activity developed by Claudio Acevedo. It shows students how the active and passive voice interact.

Another possibility following the same line:

I created this presentation for students to transform active into passive voice.

As a follow up, students will go to glogster and create a brochure for one of the destinations in the presentation. They may do some research and the only condition is that they must use passive whenever possible. After that, they could role play an interaction taking place at the travel agency, deliver a presentation about the place, etc.

For more advanced learners:

They will transform sentences into the passive voice. After they do one, they will listen to a song in order to check whether they did it correctly. If they know the name of the artist, they get an extra point :).

Here's the exercise. 

The audio: