| LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this ESL lesson on contrasting ideas are to:
- talk about social media age bans and youth tech policies;
- practise conjunctions for expressing contrast and debate solutions;
- watch a video excerpt on Australia’s social media age rules.
In this lesson, students reflect on social media usage statistics, watch part of a video (to 02:35) on the Australian age limit and discuss the effectiveness of the ban. They share their ideas, work with conjunctions of contrast (e.g. even though, in spite of, nevertheless) and learn the rules for using them. Students also explore approaches to managing youth technology use and debate alternatives, using the target contrast connectors.
B2 / Upper Intermediate60 minStandard LessonUnlimited Plan
WARM-UP AND VIDEO
This ESL lesson on contrasting ideas starts with a warm-up. Students read sentences about social media use for 16–24-year-olds in the UK (e.g. 91%/99% of people aged 16–24 use social media) and guess the correct statistics. They then discuss their reactions and app use. After that, students watch part of the video about Australia’s social media ban for under 16-year-olds. First, they say what they think might be mentioned about some points (e.g. ways to police the ban, parenting, bullying). Then, students watch the video and tick the things from the previous task that are mentioned. Moving on, they read more information about the video and choose the correct options. Next, students watch it again and check their answers. Following that, they discuss questions about social media age bans and enforcement.
PRACTISING CONJUNCTIONS OF CONTRAST
In this part of this ESL lesson on contrasting ideas, students match the halves of sentences about social media regulations that feature contrast connectors (e.g. although, despite, however). Afterwards, they use the statements from the previous task to do tasks and identify the rules for using conjunctions of contrast. Following that, students read different approaches to managing youth technology use and choose the correct conjunctions to complete them. They then discuss the solutions from the previous exercise, choosing the most effective ones and identifying potential issues. Next, students rewrite sentences using conjunctions while keeping the same meaning. Finally, in pairs, they debate alternatives to banning social media for under 16-year-olds. Students use the target phrases to build contrasting arguments for and against various options, swapping roles for each new alternative.
HOMEWORK/REVISION
This ESL lesson on contrasting ideas also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students use their own ideas to complete statements that feature conjunctions, paying attention to the structures. 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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Would it be possible to add the word ‘conjunctions’ to the description of this lesson, as you have used for many other lessons about this grammar topic? It would be helpful when searching in the future.
Hi Pete! We’ve updated the lesson overview as per your suggestion.
Thanks for keeping an eye on these details, we really appreciate it 🙂
I thought slides 21-24 were a bit overcrowded. I would’ve preferred to see the exercise more at the center, in a way that is visually clearer, but otherwise great lesson.
Thanks for the feedback! 🙂
Dear ESL Brains Team!
We are about half way through the lesson and we are enjoying it, the matter of how we and children spend our time online is a true issue of the times.
We have found a mistake however!
Slide 10 asks us to confirm which topics are “mentioned”.
At 2:09 on the video cyber bullying is distinctly mentioned! However, this is marked as “wrong” in the answer sheet, misleading!
Please can you fix it?
Hoping that the rest of the lesson will be better 😉
Kind regards
Hi! Thank you for your feedback, and we’re glad you’re enjoying the lesson so far! You’re right about the issue on slide 10. We’ve made some changes to the task so that the answers are now clearer and align with what is said in the video. 🙂
Am I being stupid? IWhat do you mean by idea 1/2 in the grammar section?
Hi Helen! If you mean this statement: “Choose the correct option: The phrases in bold are used to contrast/compare/agree with idea 1 and idea 2”, it describes the general rule that applies to all the phrases in bold in sentences A–F in ex. 6 (or the bullet points on slides 21–24 in the e-lesson). Each statement contains two ideas that are contrasted using the bolded word or phrase. We hope it’s clearer now!