Designers – think big!

Justa | Apr 26, 2017May 16, 2023

LESSON OVERVIEW

This ESL worksheet for adults is based on the TED Talk by Tim Brown titled “Designers – think big!”. The goal of the lesson is to talk about design and design thinking and how it can affect our lives.

WARM-UP AND DISCUSSION

First of all, students should do a word-formation task on vocabulary which is helpful for the discussions on design. There are such words as viable, aesthetic, feasible, etc. Then, there are some general discussion points on design and students’ own ideas about well-designed products. In addition, there are two exercises on words from the talk. The first one is a definition-matching task and the second deals with collocations. Students learn such phrases as obsolete products, reinvent the idea, tackle an issue, etc.

VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

Then, students move to talk through the quotations from the speech. They have to decide whether they agree with them or not as well as give examples. Finally, the last task makes students collect their own ideas on how design can help in some areas of life. If possible, this task is great to be done in pairs as students can exchange their ideas.
The TED Talk itself is quite long – almost 17 minutes, so it is better to ask students to watch it at home. This ESL worksheet for adults was created for Design students at the University of Arts so it resonated with their interests; however, there is not much professional language there, so everyone who has some interest in tinkering, designing or finding solutions might like it.

WORKSHEETS

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