| Last update: June 18, 2025
LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this updated lesson are to:
- work on word formation with ‘bore’, ‘harm’, ‘addict’ and ‘obsess’;
- watch a video and discuss the smartphone addiction;
- learn and practise the phrases for expressing preference;
- develop reading skills.
With this lesson, students work with different forms of words (e.g. harm, harmful, harmless), watch a video about a teenager being addicted to her phone and discuss their daily smartphone use. Students also explore the phrases for expressing preference (e.g. prefer + noun + to + noun, would rather do… than do…) and put them into practice while discussing various scenarios. The lesson has been updated to provide students with a more relevant and up-to-date video and research results. There’s also now a short warm-up, an activity to practise the phrases for expressing preference and homework.
VOCABULARY AND VIDEO
The lesson starts with a warm-up in which students talk about a problem that technology brings to people. Then, to help students express their ideas connected with addiction, there is a word-building task. Students need to come up with the correct forms from such words as ‘addict’, ‘obsess’, ‘harm’ and ‘bore’. After that, students discuss some questions with the vocabulary and start talking about smartphone addiction. Then, students watch a video about it and mark the sentences as true or false. After the video, they discuss how often they look at their smartphones in various situations (e.g. while working, while using a toilet). There’s also information from the recent online research that teachers can share with students to discuss.
EXPRESSING PREFERENCE AND READING
This lesson plan includes a grammar point on expressing preference. Students have to study a few sentences containing such phrases as ‘would rather’, ‘would prefer’ and ‘prefer’. Then, they need to complete the grammar structure forms. Then, students complete the sentences with one word to work with the phrases more. There is also a speaking activity. Students work in pairs and discuss what they would choose in some situations and give reasons. During that task, they should use the structures for expressing preference. After that, students read a text which shows the other side of the argument, i.e. the good sides of smartphones. After reading, students do an exercise on figuring out the meaning of new vocabulary from context. This activity is structured just as part of the TOEFL iBT Reading section. At the end, students discuss what they’ve just read.
HOMEWORK/REVISION
This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students correct the mistakes in the sentences. Then, they discuss whether they agree or disagree with the statements. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.
WORKSHEETS
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Great
EXTRAORDINARY! thank you for these worksheets they are a great way to teach my students different topics, discussion, vocabulary, etc.
Thank you!
Thanks for such great work!
Interesting topic and way to deal with it.
Thank you!
This is really great. Just afraid we may run out of topics to work with. I’d be glad if we are flooded with more than enough materials to work with. You have saved me ,Thanks a million times
Thanks Bryan!
For a more in-depth video for higher level class — totally suggest this Vox video also!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUMa0QkPzns
Nice one! Thanks for sharing. It’s a really interesting video.
That’s a great addition. Thanks!
Thank you very much for sharing that Mariah. Lots of love from Brazil.
Hi! Really amazing! I usually like to give my students the script of the videos. Are there any lessons with the script included?
All the videos based on TED Talks have good quality transcripts available, e.g. https://eslbrains.com/got-a-meeting-take-a-walk/. Very often you can also find CC in YouTube videos but watch out! Some of them are auto-generated and would require you to check and correct them – they’re generally not so bad but never perfect.
excellent~
Great
Great! What exactly has been updated?
Hi! As mentioned above in the lesson overview, the lesson has been updated to provide students with a more relevant and up-to-date video and research results. There’s also now a short warm-up, an activity to practise the phrases for expressing preference and homework. Hope that helps 🙂
Thank you