Family

50 minutes class

1. BRAINSTORMING

Start off with a brainstorming about the concept of family, so that your students can start focusing about today’s topic and feel good about themselves for speaking a few words. Guess what, brainstorming is all about ideas, there is no right or wrong answer. Get them exited for class and keep their phrases or words on the side to then check later on how many we can actually match with the class.

2. WARM UP

Now let’s warm up our students with a couple of idioms. For each idiom, let your student guess the meaning first, and then let’s try to make some examples together and most importantly let’s try to use these while answering some of the questions below.

meaning: if you say this you are emphasizing that family connections and loyalty are always more important than anything else.

example: we might fight, however blood is thicker than water.

meaning: many people from the same family have a specific skill, disease, quality etc.

example: Intelligence seems to run in that family, they all became good doctors.

meaning: to look extremely similar to someone.

example: I have nothing of my mom, and yet I am the spitting image of my grandma!

3. CONVERSATION

Now, in the conversation I always write in bold idioms or key vocabulary. These are the words that the students potentially may not know or that instead need to be studied because they are frequently used in this topic.

1. How big is your family?
2. How do you spend time with your family members? What do you and your family like to do together? How often is your entire family together?
3. Do you take after your mom or dad?
4. Who is the black sheep in your family?
5. Do you have any influence on family matters?
6. Are there any chores assigned to you in your house?
7. Do your parents let you stay out late or do you have a curfew?
8. Are friends more important than family? What do you think?
9. Would you like to start a family one day?
10. Is spanking a good way to discipline children?
11. Who should take care of old people? How do you feel about your parents growing older? If they could no longer care for themselves, would you let them live with you or put them in a nursing home?
12. If you were offered an excellent job opportunity abroad, would you consider leaving your family for a period of time? Or for a lifetime?
13. Describe a typical family unit and the importance of family in your country.

4. HOMEWORK and/or FINAL EXERCISE

I know, nobody likes homework, however a good exercise would be choosing one of the questions and writing it down. Why? Because by writing it down we can see and fix those errors that might seem superficial in the conversation.