[Warm up] Topic about criticism.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

 – Albert Einstein

I usually start my classes with warmers (or warm up). I think it is an efficient way to have students working on their English skills. I almost always, prioritize the oral skills in these kinds of warmers. No, I don’t think that the spoken language is more important than other skills (sub skills or whatever). I just like to give my students the opportunity to talk before we go into the lesson.

In this one, I would suggest you to give them (you may choose the resource - slides, piece of paper, write on the board, for instance) a question, or a quote, and let them reflect upon their answers before they share their viewpoints with the whole group.

I like when they work in pair (or groups) before talking to the other classmates. I would recommend you to do the same (if you feel like doing this activity at all, obviously).

My suggestion in this post is:

You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire.  They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend.  The criticism is distasteful and unjustified.  What do you do?

click image to enlarge

DIRECTIONS

Show your students the situation (above) and then ask them to work in groups (or pairs) and after that, ask them to talk about the situation.

ALTERNATIVE (to go beyond the warmer)

An idea to extend the practice is to ask them to write (writing skill may be practiced here) in a small piece of paper a short story and then ask them to role-play a short scene (the one the other group wrote, not theirs). In doing so, all the students may work collaboratively in order to practice the activity and learn together.

Give them some ‘characteristics’ or ‘stereotypes’ (they should speak with a Chinese accent, or dance while speaking, for example) to be performed. I’m always amused when I see and hear my students performing something they wrote. (See my videos below). 

There are other suggestions on the blog (See here). 

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