Lesson n.1 - Unit n. 2: Title Buying a house Homelessness in Italy Keywords: all the vocabulary studied so far. Listening STUDY SKILLS AND Speaking Presenting results Comparing Activity 1: Students Presentations The students present their results about Homelessness in Italy. Using the rubric below, the other students assess their classmates presentations. Information Excellent Good Poor Amount of Information (How much information has the group given?) Relevance of Information (Is the information relevant to the topic?) Quality of Information (Is the information provided interesting?) Presentation Eye Contact (Students maintain eye contact with the audience and rely on their notes only as a prompt) Clarity (Students communicate clearly and effectively and listeners can follow easily) Language (Language is fluent and appropriate) Sharing of Tasks (All members of the group have equally contributed to the presentation) Product Design (The presentation is well organized, the information is presented in an attractive way, nice visuals) Writing (The text is written with no errors in grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.) Did you like the presentation? Why, Why not? Write three things you particularly liked about the presentation. 1. 2. 3. At the end of the activity the teacher collects the students evaluations.
Lesson n.2 - Unit n. 2: Title Buying a house STUDY SKILLS AND ICT Buying a house Keywords: customer, e-banking, e-loan, e-mortgage. Verbs: to buy, to sell, to ask for a loan Listening Speaking Expressing your own opinion, comparing Surfing the Net and comparing websites Activity 1: Revising vocabulary The teacher organises small groups of three to four students and tells them to write down as many words as they can remember from the lessons about mortgages they have done so far with the maths, business administration and ICT teachers. Once they have finished, the students have to join another group and swap there lists. If there are different words they have to add them to their group s list and copy them in their vocabulary notebook. <Word 1> = <Word 2> Activity 2: Pair Work e-banking (the activity takes place in the computer lab) The students have to surf the three websites listed below and fill in the evaluation rubric. Date Website 1 http://www.eloan.com/ Group Give a grade from 1, terrible, to 5, excellent Design (The website is well organized, the information is presented in an attractive way, nice visuals) Navigation (Is it easy to navigate?) Interactivity (How interactive is it?) Services offered (does the website offer a wide range of services?) Contacts (how can customers contact them? Is it easy?) Write three things you particularly liked about the website. 1. 2. 3. Comments? Note down the steps to follow if you want to get a mortgage loan:
Date Group Website 2 http://www.mortgages-online.co.uk/ Design (The website is well organized, the information is presented in an attractive way, nice visuals) Navigation (Is it easy to navigate?) Interactivity (How interactive is it?) Services offered (does the website offer a wide range of services?) Contacts (how can customers contact them? Is it easy?) Give a grade from 1, terrible, to 5, excellent Comments? Write three things you particularly liked about the website. 1. 2. 3. Note down the steps to follow if you want to get a mortgage loan: Date Website 3 http://www.gmacmortgage.com/ Group Design (The website is well organized, the information is presented in an attractive way, nice visuals) Navigation (Is it easy to navigate?) Interactivity (How interactive is it?) Services offered (does the website offer a wide range of services?) Contacts (how can customers contact them? Is it easy?) Give a grade from 1, terrible, to 5, excellent Comments? Write three things you particularly liked about the website. 1. 2. 3. Note down the steps to follow if you want to get a mortgage loan: At the end of the activity the teacher tells them to speak with their partner for about 5 minutes using their notes. They have to say which website looked more user-friendly and why.
HOMEWORK The teacher tells the students to be ready to speak about the websites they visited. They have to compare them, say which website they liked best and why. Lesson n.3 - Unit n. 2: Title Buying a house Getting a mortgage loan Keywords: customer, e-banking, e-loan, e-mortgage, interest rate, instalment, amount, user-friendly Verbs: to buy, to sell, to get a loan, to ask for a loan, to calculate, to surf the Net Listening Speaking STUDY SKILLS AND Expressing your opinion Presenting results Peer assessment and self-assessment Activity 1: Students Presentations The students have 5 minutes to say their opinion about the three websites they visited. The other students can ask questions or make further comments. At the end of the speeches, the teacher gives the students the worksheet below: Useful expressions to compare two or more items Website 1 is not as nice as website 2 because the colours are too flashy The images in website 2 are higher quality than the images in website 3 The contact page in website 1 is more user-friendly than the one in website 3. Website 2 is easier to navigate than website 3. The home page in website 1 is better than the one in website 2 because Website 1 offers a wider range of services than website 2. Common mistakes Website 1 is not nice like website 2 because. The images in website 2 have a quality more high than the images. The contact page in website 1 is more user-friendly then the one in website 3. Website 2 is more easy to navigate than website 3. The home page in website 1 is best than the one in website 2 because Website 1 offer a wider range of services that website 2. Explain the mistake and write a new sentence using the corrected form The as as phrase is used when expressing equality in a comparison. (commonly used in the negative form) One-syllable adjectives: add -er The word then means afterwards, the word than is used to introduce the second term of comparison Two-syllable adjectives ending in y: change the y to i and add er to make the comparative form Use a comparative when comparing two things (best is the superlative form) The word than is used to introduce the second term of comparison
Website 3 is the most attractive one because it has nice visuals. Website 2 is the friendliest of the three because the contact page is very easy to reach. Website 3 is the more attractive one. Website 2 is the most friendly of the three because the contact page is very easy to reach. More is used in comparative forms, not superlative forms. Use a superlative when comparing more than two things (the most + adj. with long adjectives) Two-syllable adjectives ending in y: change the y to i and add est to make the superlative form. After going through some sentences, the teacher writes the following modifiers on the IW: by far nowhere near far slightly much a little bit easily And asks the students: How can you use the expressions above to make the comparison stronger or weaker? The teacher writes some examples on the board: 1. Website 1 is nowhere near as nice as website 2 because the colours are too flashy. 2. Website 2 is much / far easier to navigate than website 3. 3. Website 2 is by far the friendliest of the three because the contact page is very easy to reach. 4. The home page in website 1 is a little bit better than the one in website 2 because 5. The images in website 2 are slightly higher quality than the images in website 3. 6. Website 3 is easily the most attractive one because it has nice visuals. What can you see? Which modifiers are used with comparatives to make them stronger? nowhere near, much / far Which modifiers are used with comparatives to make them weaker? slightly, a little bit Which ones are used with superlatives to make them stronger? easily, by far Activity 2: Reflection / Self evaluation The teacher gives the students the rubrics used by their classmates to evaluate the students presentations in Lesson n.1 - Unit n. 2 Activity 1. The groups discuss their strengths and weaknesses with their partners and with the teacher in order to improve their presentation skills.
Lesson n.4 - Unit n. 2: Title Buying a house STUDY SKILLS AND Formal & Informal Correspondence, Enquiries Keywords: customer, e-banking, e-loan, e-mortgage, interest rate, instalment, amount, dear Sir/Madam, yours sincerely, yours faithfully Verbs: to buy, to sell, to get a loan, to ask for a loan, to calculate Writing Asking for information Using different language registers Peer assessment and self-assessment Activity 1: Group Work (3 students) - Writing an informal email The teacher forms groups of 3 students and gives them the following instructions: Write an email to a friend and tell him/her: - that you would like to buy a house or a flat (say something about the kind of property) - that you ve visited some websites in order to find information about e-mortgages - what you ve found out / what your intentions are Say goodbye and ask your friend what she thinks about it. When you ve finished writing your email, swap it with another group s. Read it, correct the mistakes, give two bonuses (++) if all the points in the prompt have been covered, give one bonus (+) if most of the points have been covered, no bonus if a lot of information is missing. Give an extra bonus if you think that the language is good. When you have finished, give the emails to the teacher. The teacher will mark your emails using the scorecard below. The teacher will circle 1 mark if a student included the topic, 2 marks for communicating it accurately and effectively. There is a maximum of eight marks. The student gave information about: - what house or flat s/he would like to buy 1 2 - the e-mortgage websites s/he visited 1 2 - what s/he has found out / what s/he is going to do 1 2 Said goodbye and asked his/her friend what s/he thinks about it. 1 2 Activity 2: Pair Work - Language Registers The teacher tells the students to read the expressions below and sort them into three categories: informal (I) / semiformal (SF) / formal (F) language. Hi Jack, (I) Dear Mr Jones, (F) (SF) Dear Sir / Madam, (F)
Hello Clarissa, (I) Could you also tell me if (SF) Just writing to let u know that (I) I would like to know whether (F) I m gonna buy a house (I) Best regards, (SF) Dunno if it s possible, but just thought I d ask. (I) I am writing to enquire about.(f) Would be great to get a yes answer! (I) Gimme a bell. (I) Yours sincerely, (F) I m writing to get some information about (SF) Cheers, (I) Do u reckon it would be possible to get money (I) Finally, I was wondering if (F) Give me all the info you can, man. (I) If you can get back to me as soon as possible, it would be great. (SF) Thanks for your help. (SF) I would be grateful for any information you can give me. (F) I look forward to hearing from you soon. (F) I ve got a few questions: (SF) With regards to (F) How about? (I) At the end of the activity the teacher tells the students to swap their worksheets with another pair and check their classmates answers using the teacher s answer sheet. They give two bonuses (++) if there are no mistakes, a bonus (+) if they find one to three mistakes, no bonus if they find more than three mistakes. At the end they return their worksheets to the teacher, who will register the bonuses on his/her notebook.
Lesson n.4 - Unit n. 2: Title Buying a house STUDY SKILLS AND ICT Formal, Semiformal & Informal Correspondence, Enquiries Keywords: customer, e-banking, e-loan, e-mortgage, interest rate, instalment, amount, dear Sir/Madam, yours sincerely, yours faithfully Verbs: to buy, to sell, to get a loan, to ask for a loan, to calculate Writing Asking for information Using different language registers Peer assessment and self-assessment Creating and using a writing bank on an e-learning platform Activity 1: Revision The teacher displays two of the emails written by the students on the IW and highlights the key features of the informal language used in emails to friends. If necessary, the teacher writes down a list of the common mistakes, and asks the students to suggest the correct form and / or give examples of useful expressions. Then she saves list and the corrected file and uploads them onto the class e-learning platform. The corrected emails will be used as a class resource, in particular for parallel writing activities, in case weaker students should need extra work or help at the end of the module. Activity 2: Pair Work - Writing an enquiry Each pair has to write an enquiry email to one of the websites visited during the activity in the computer lab (Activity 2, Lesson n.2 - Unit n. 2), using the semiformal or formal language learned in the previous lesson (Activity 2, Lesson n.4 - Unit n. 2). When they have finished writing their email, they swap it with another group s. They read it, correct the mistakes, give two bonuses (++) if they think the language register is always appropriate, one bonus (+) if most of the language used is appropriate, no bonus if they think that the language is mostly inappropriate. The teacher collects the emails and corrects them at home. Activity 3: Giving feedback about the unit The teacher asks the students, individually, to answer the following questions: What do you think was most interesting about the module? What do you need more help with? The teacher collects the answers and uses them to evaluate whether the students need extra work on some of the topics covered in the module.