Lesson Topics: Friendship, loneliness
Skill Focus: Speaking, Reading, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.75 hours
Lesson Plan Download: friendship-intermediate-lesson-022024.docx
Lesson Overview:
- After warm-up questions, students read a 212-word passage about friendship in the 21st century. The passage mentions a trend in Western countries of people having fewer close friends.
- After a read, recall, retell activity, students match topics to each paragraph. They then complete comprehension questions, a vocabulary-matching exercise, and an activity where they make questions using the target vocabulary.
- There are two debate topics about friendship students can choose from. After, there are two roleplay activities. The first asks a student to give advice to a newcomer who needs friends. The second is between a friendship matchmaker and a client.
- This is followed by a story-telling activity in which students use images and vocabulary to retell a story about friendship. (Note: the images are meant to depict two friends losing touch due to family, which is an idea from the reading passage.)
- Next, students review the lesson's vocabulary and review some friendship proverbs. Finally, the lesson ends with collocations and final discussion questions.
INTERMEDIATE (B1/B2) Lesson Plan on Friendship
Warm-up-Questions
- How many close friends do you have? How often do you see them?
- What qualities should a good friend have?
- Does modern life make it easier to make friends? If your answer is ‘no’, then why not?
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys, proverbs, and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.
Comprehension Question Answer Key
- …
- People make friends on social media and also with chatbots.
- When people enter their thirties, they have fewer friends. This may be due to moving or because parents spend more time with their children.
- These studies have found that men do not have many close friends.
- The passage mentions cigarettes in order to make a comparison. It is comparing two unhealthy things: being lonely and smoking cigarettes. Both of these things can reduce a person’s lifespan.
Vocabulary Answers: 1-b, 2-h, 3-a, 4-f, 5-g, 6-e, 7-c, 8-d
Collocation Answers: 1-f, 2-a, 3-c, 4-e, 5-b, 6-d
[1] https://www.euronews.com/health/2023/02/15/fewer-friends-less-time-to-hang-out-what-data-says-of-our-friendships-post-pandemic-world
[2] https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/americans-no-friends/
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-a-growing-number-of-american-men-say-they-are-in-a-friendship-recession
[4] https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/americans-no-friends/
[5] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/06/cover-story-science-friendship