Different flavours of friends

Joe | Apr 04, 2025Apr 03, 2025

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• engage in talking about friendships from different perspectives;
• watch a video on how some friendships last;
• practise phrases to talk about friendships and expressions for generalisation.

With this lesson, students discuss quotes about friendship, explore types of friends and work with phrases to describe relationships (e.g. intimate, self-esteem, surface level). They talk about connections, watch a video about friendship and practise expressions for generalisation (e.g. overall, on the whole, broadly speaking). Students also share their experiences and express their preferences in social interactions.

VOCABULARY AND VIDEO

This lesson starts with a warm-up. Students read quotes about friendship, choose one they like and say why. Following that, students read descriptions of types of friendships. They then match each one with a type of friend (casual acquaintance, confidant and long-distance friend). Afterwards, students look at words and phrases for talking about friendships (e.g. setbacks, rapport, bloom) and find their synonyms. Next, they discuss questions about friendship and connection. After that, students watch the first part of a video about friendship and say if anything is surprising. They then predict what the rest of the video will be about. Afterwards, students watch the rest of the video. They match the ideas mentioned in the video with statements about them.

TALKING ABOUT FRIENDSHIPS

At this point in the lesson, students read statements about friendships and social interactions. They then choose a phrase (in general) that can be used to replace other phrases for expressing generalisations (e.g. overall, on the whole, broadly speaking) in the statements. After that, students engage in talking about friendships. They choose three statements and say if they agree or disagree with them, and why. Next, students complete statements on generalisations about friendships with their own ideas. They also provide details. Finally, students compare pairs of sentences (e.g. I can usually tell if someone likes me. OR It’s difficult for me to tell if someone likes me.) and choose the one they agree with more. They use expressions for generalisations and justify their choices.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students read statements and complete gaps with phrases to describe friends. They then use expressions for generalisation to explain how far 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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