Are emojis making us dumber?

Leanne | Nov 19, 2021Dec 23, 2022

LESSON OVERVIEW

In this lesson about emojis students not only learn words to describe some common features of nonverbal communication, but they also watch a video and reflect on the role of emojis in digital communication.

WARM-UP & FEATURES OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

The warm-up activity starts with a guessing game. Students have to decipher four film titles encoded into emojis. Next, they look at ten common emojis and describe what they can see. The aim of the following task is to match the ten emojis with ten words describing different features of nonverbal communication given in a box (e.g. grimace, wink, eye roll). Students comment on the emojis and say how often and in which situations they use them. They also share their opinions on other aspects of using emojis in everyday digital communication. 

VIDEO & EMOJI CONVERSATIONS

The second part of this lesson about emojis starts with a video. Before students watch it for the first time, they once again look at the title of the lesson (Are emojis making us dumber?), answer the question and justify their answers. Students then listen for gist – to check if their ideas were correct. Next, they watch the video again and make notes on the functions that emojis provide in digital communication. The listening task is followed by another discussion about different aspects of using emojis mentioned in the video. At the end of this lesson, students try to translate two emoji conversations into English. Their final task is to create two emoji dialogues on their own, exchange them with their partners and translate. Alternatively, students can write the conversations in pairs and then exchange them with another pair.

WORKSHEETS

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