| LESSON OVERVIEW
This lesson plan focuses on basic English questions. Students watch an interview with two famous actors and discuss different questions. Students also do a role play where they interview each other.
VIDEO & DISCUSSION
The lesson starts with a discussion about whether students google information about celebrities and if they know who Nathalie Portman and Jude Law are. This question leads to the activities based on a video where the two actors are answering different questions. First, students look at the notes from the interview and complete the missing words. Then, they watch the second part of the interview and answer more questions. Students also discuss whether they find any of the information from the video surprising and what else they would like to know. Students also do an activity where they have to order the words to make basic English questions. After that, they continue watching the video. At first, students look at the answers and try to guess what the questions are. After they check their answers, they look at the given words and try to predict what questions they are from. When students finish watching the interview they discuss it. Also, they get to think about which celebrities they would like to see in this style of interview and make three questions to ask them.
PRACTICE
In this part of the lesson, students learn some functional language. They first have to read a few useful phrases to use when asking and answering basic English questions (e.g. ‘Let me think.’, ‘That’s a tricky one.’, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t catch that.’, etc.) and choose when they can use the phrases. After that, students practise these phrases by completing the dialogues. Finally, students work in pairs and interview each other. There are four different situations students can role-play (e.g. interviewing a famous tennis player or interviewing an Instagram influencer). They are also encouraged to use the phrases from the lesson.
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This is something that I need! Thank you
We’re happy to hear that, Paulina! Thank you for your feedback 🙂
great idea for a lesson! Why not one that focuses on more elaborated/ advanced questions? A lot of my students ask for this. 😉
Thank you for your feedback and suggestion, Christiane! There are more lesson plans on ESL Brains related to questions. You can check out these ones, for example:
https://eslbrains.com/how-to-use-questioning-techniques-to-get-better-answers/
https://eslbrains.com/questions-no-one-knows-the-answers-to/
The subtitles of YT do not work properly, hence you have to stop at every second for students to be able to catch up to the speeds of especially Jude. The questions in discussion parts are lackluster, tried it on two different classes with no interest from them whatsoever. Even though the Googled questions are easy to comprehend for A2 level students, the answers ruin it. Sorry but not liked this one.
Hi there!
Thank you for this feedback!
Sorry to hear that your students didn’t find this lesson very engaging. We do our best to make sure the topics and questions are interesting for a variety of classrooms as well individual students, but even something that worked well with one group doesn’t always have the same effect with the other one.
Having said that, we appreciate any kind of feedback and we’ll try to keep it in mind when designing our new lessons plans. Thank you!
If you go to the link in Youtube, the captions work, just tried it. You can also change the speed of youtube videos. I prefer .9 speed, perfect for students because it still sounds natural.
Excellent lesson. More like this please. Happy New Year
Thank you so much! Happy New year! 🙂
Wonderful video. Watched it a year ago and made my own task for it fro my clients. Natalie Portman is the supreme combination of beauty and high IQ. Exceptional human. Having Harvard Ms + Oscar. Who does that?