Some of the more eagle-eyed among you may recognise the title from another lesson that we have done. This one seeks to differ though in its focus on future forms. There is also a focus pronunciation, intonation in the first listening and connected speech in the second.
The idea for this came, as so many of ideas do, when I was a little grumpy. This time i was imagining how much worse my mood would be if someone were to cancel plans I had made. If you know me, changing or cancelling of plans is one of my pet hates, unless it means I no longer have to do anything, then that is ok! However, I digress. The focus of this is to present the different structures we use for future forms within a context in which they may exist in the ‘real world’ and obviously to provide listening practice and hopefully some chances for them to use the newly acquired knowledge in a review of what was learnt from listening two at the end:
Level: Strong Int with scaffolding but prob Upper Int and above
Aims: To highlight the uses of future forms / to focus on pronunciation and intonation
Procedure:
Pre listening (optional) ask students to discuss their plans for the evening and the rest of the wk and record themselves. 1 min max recording time.
Listening 1:
Play the first recording once. Ask students how the person speaking feels at the beginning and the end of the conversation. Ask them how they can tell and what do they think caused this change?
Who is speaking to who, about what? what is the relationship between the speakers? How do they know?
*If you wanted you could board some hypothetical language of prediction for them to use: could be, sounds like / as if / I suppose/guess.
Additionally, you could add some adjectives to describe emotions to the board, for students who struggle a little more.
Grammar:
1. answers:
- fine
- I’m meeting Chris…
- We’ll maybe go…
2. answers and instructions:
What tense is each one?
present simple / present continuous / will
Why was each tense used here?
This is the more interesting part, it is all about reflection on the tenses and what they know about them with regards to their function.
for me, present simple used for timetabled event
present continuous used for an arrangement
will used to imply that the event is not fixed, less certain.
What would be the difference to the meaning if any of the other future forms were used?
In the first, this is the only tense that sounds natural here.
in the second ‘be going to’ could easily be used and this is also the case in the third example.
3. Reflection on st’s own usage – (if you recorded students at the beginning use it here, ask them to listen and write down which future structures they tend to use.)
group discussion, the rules they select are fine, try not to correct too much at this point, encourage them to think about how they differ, by all means monitor and prod them towards the right direction though.
4. This is something I call Audi Future, the idea is that we often use more than one tense for one function, but that they don’t all get used for the same things.
- Will – offers / spontaneous decision / promises / predictions
- Be going to – plans / predictions with fact
- present continuous – arrangements
- present simple – timetabled events
These will be known to you and to many of your students, the whole point of the graphic though is to show how native speakers are often a little flexible with these definitions, hence the fact they overlap. Despite this though, we never really use present continuous for a spontaneous decision, so only when the two circles overlap can there be a mixture of use.
*also perhaps pointing out that often when ‘will’ is used for promises it is often pronounced fully, rather than it’s more usual contracted form.
Pronunciation:
A brief focus on natural pronunciation
How’s it going?
Ask students how to pronounce this – you will probably get 3 or four separate words.
Here you are trying to get them to notice that it is in fact two words
/haʊzɪt gəʊwən/
The second sound in the first could be a schwa for some, but I think I pronounce it /ɪ/.
Intonation – ask students to draw what happens to the voice during this
‘go’ has the big stress
Ask if students can think of any other examples of native speakers putting words together like this. You might get the following:
whatcha doing / dyer like / etc
Listening 2:
Prediction – this is a much neglected listening skill. We do it instinctively, but it seems to be one of those skills that students don’t use when learning English.
Explain the second conversation is the person phoning the other person, Chris, and ask the students to predict what will be said in groups.
All class feedback, board suggestions
Ask what grammar they would expect to hear.
Listen to check, ask students to take notes on what they hear then ask the following questions:
- Is this the first time James has let them down?
- How does the speaker feel about it?
- What is their plan for the evening?
Grammar:
The focus on conditionals ties into something that we both talk about a lot, which is the limitations of putting conditionals into the 0/1/2/3 categories.
Neither of these conditionals fit neatly into those boxes, which can throw some students of the scent a little in terms of their meanings.
This aims to focus on the meaning, and when they refer to, rather than just focusing on the more traditional numbers.
Vocab:
There are only two things that I would draw the student’s attention to here.
Bail – to cancel at the last minute (in this context)
This could be a good opportunity for students to see how dictionaries really don’t always have the answers they are looking for. You could get the students to look in their dictionaries and then listen for the word and see if it fits with the meaning in the situation.
Alternatively, you could ask them just to work out the meaning of the word from the context. Make sure that they have considered register here.
Fancy – ask them to listen and to see what they think the meaning is in this context.
Draw attention to the register difference of ‘fancy’ / ‘would like’ / ‘to be up for it’ see in which situations they think they would be used. maybe ask if they can think of any other ways of saying this and ask them to create a cline from formal to informal.
Pron:
Just to draw some attention to some common features of connected speech. You can drill it, but for me the focus hear is very much preparing them for what happens in the real world, rather than trying to get them to take on all the features of connected speech in their own pronunciation.
“guess what”
/geswɒ/ – the ‘t’ isn’t pronounced
“he always”
/hɪjɔːleɪz/ – the /j/ sound connects the two vowel sounds, students are probably not aware of this. Ask the students if they can think of other examples of this.
“to be honest”
/təbiːjɒnɪs/ – the to uses the schwa and as above there is an intrusive /j/ sound and the /t/ is dropped from honest
“if we fancy it”
/fwiːfænsɪjɪt/ – ‘If we’ becomes one sound – /fwiː/ – this frequently happens when native speakers are using conditionals.
Grammar (revision):
Ask students to listen and note down future forms they hear, and ask them to reflect whether the use of them connects to what was examined earlier in the class.
Place them in groups and ask them to discuss this together.
Materials:
Audio 1
Audio 2
textploitation 