Experts in Language Assessment

Likes and dislikes


Aim:

to practise speaking and asking questions about a range of topics

Target Audience:

students

Relevance to SfL:

Speaking and Listening Entry 1, Phase 1b and Phase 2b

Organisation:

whole class then pairs

Materials needed:

Worksheet

  1. In the first topic box on the worksheet fill in the name of X (the town/city/place where the students’ classes take place). Photocopy one table per student.
  2. Tell students you have some questions about X for them. Ask several strong students different questions from this list:

    1. Do you like X?
    2. What do you like about X?
    3. Is X a good town/city/place?

    Encourage the students to expand on their answers, e.g. ‘Yes. It’s a friendly town. / No. It’s dirty. / I like the old houses. They’re very beautiful.’ Make notes of their answers on the board, e.g. ‘Yes. friendly / old houses / beautiful / No. dirty’, then elicit and write up the question. Repeat the process with the other two question patterns.
  3. Drill all the questions with the whole class and individually, paying attention to stress and the elision of ‘do you’.
  4. Give out the table. Using the examples on the board, elicit what goes in the boxes on the top line.
  5. Ask students to look at the other two topics in the table: the shops and the weather. Elicit possible questions about these topics and drill them.
  6. Elicit other topic areas about the town, e.g. the people, the parks, the traffic, and list them on the board.
  7. Working alone, students choose three topics from the list, fill them in on their table and write questions to ask about them. Go round the class and check that their questions are correct.
  8. Once the questions in their tables are completed, students work in pairs and ask and answer questions in turn to complete the table.

Notes/Variations: