Money money money

There are always money based sections in coursebooks, but I like to find something to pad it out and broaden the lesson around the subject, so I have a few money based speaking and vocabulary activites I’d like to share.

I have previsouly made worksheets for these lessons, which you can download further down the post.

1. Phrasal Verbs

Let’s face it, the majority of students (and teachers) hate phrasal verbs. But when it comes to money, we use a lot of phrasal verbs (splash out, cough up etc.) and they are quite commonly used in colloquial English, so they shouldn’t be ignored.

My first sheet is a verb matching exercise. The phrasal verb is written on one side in the infinitive, with an contextual example underneath. The definitions are mixed up on the right and the students have to match them up.

Have a look: Money phrasal verb1

2. Speaking

This activity can take up to 45 minutes if you allow it to. Download the worksheet and cut up the questions.

Hand out one question to each student. Tell them to mingle and ask as many people as possible their question. Encourage them to ask follow up questions and get a conversation going out of it.

Sit the students back down, and ask a few of them to read out their questions, ask them for their answer, along with a few others. Try to get some debating going on if the question allows it.

There are, of course, loads of ways you could use these cards… Split them up into groups and get small discussion groups going on.

You can download the questions here: money questions

I hope you can use these in your lessons! Let me know hoe it goes and if you have any suggestions. Have fun!

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Come Dine With Me

There is a popular TV programme called “Come Dine With Me”, where 5 strangers throw a dinner party for each other and they score the host’s efforts in secret. The winner wins £1000.

I spent the week building up vocab and knowledge of the topic of food. We did readings, phrasal verbs, food phrases (eg. she’s as nice as pie, they’re nuts, it’s not really my cup of tea, piece of cake etc.), and the students had to write recipes for their favourite food and research food from a country I gave them.

On the Friday, we played Come Dine With Me, and it went really well.

We did a very short reading on the programme, just so they understood what we were doing. Then we watched an episode of “Come Dine With Me”, and they had to answer a few questions (what food do they make, what was the final score? etc)

This is the episode we watched, set in East London:

 They then had about half an hour to creat their own dinner party menu. they had to include all the ingredients, and how to prepare the food.

I split them into two groups and they had to then present their dinner party to their group. Everyone had a piece of paper and secretly marked the person and put it into an envelope. Once everyone had presented their menu, they added up their score to see who won.

I gave the winner a blown up photocopy of a cheque as their prize. 🙂

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