The Paradoxes of Life (Advanced EFL Lesson)

ESL/EFL Level: Advanced (C1)
Lesson Topic: common paradoxes encountered in life 
Skill Focus
: Speaking, Reading, Listening, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.75 hours
Lesson Plan Download: paradoxes-of-life-advanced-lesson-022023.docx
Lesson Overview:

  • After a short warm-up and introduction, a reading passage introduces thirteen paradoxes that people encounter in life. Some of the paradoxes contain related quotations. Students are asked to discuss the paradoxes, decide if they are true, and then list some examples.
  • Post-reading activities include an activity where students come up with five takeaways from the paradoxes, a discussion of the Prisoner's Dilemma, a focus on oxymorons and Catch-22s, a roleplay for a job, and a sentence completion task.
  • All lessons come with warm-up questions and discussion questions.

A businessman running in a figure eight.

ADVANCED (C1) Lesson on the Paradoxes of Life

Warm-up Questions (Pair-work)

  1. Do you feel like the harder you work, the more you achieve in life?
  2. What is a paradox? Can you define the word or give examples?
  3. What are some things about life that do not make sense to you?

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-- EFL Lesson plan on Paradoxes written 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. For questions, contact the author.

Vocabulary Answers: 1-d, 2-b, 3-a, 4-f, 5-e, 6-c, 7-h, 8-g

Footnote: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

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