Unit Objectives
The Environment

Students learn vocabulary and participate in activities about environmental issues. Topics include global warming, logging, energy conservation, etc..

The Past & Present

Students review and expand understanding of the Present Perfect.

Vocabulary Expansion: Participial Adjectives

Students are introduced to the form and use of adjectives that stem from verbs.

Listening
Climate Change

Two people discuss how they feel about whether or not they believe that climate change is a real phenomenon. 

Environmentally-Friendly Changes

Listening activity based on recordings of what ten people do in their lives to help the environment. The listening activity contains several words from unit vocabulary and acts as a review of Grammar - Connecting the Past & Present #1 and preview of Grammar - Connecting the Past & Present #2.

Saving Energy

Listening activity based on one man’s description of his experience growing up conscious of environmental issues. The listening activity contains several words from the unit vocabulary.

Speaking
Unit Introduction Discussion

Unit introduction conversation activity.

Vocabulary Discussion

Vocabulary discussion activity.

Role-Plays

Students improvise dialogues according to prompts.

Speaking Pairs

Students practice describing present situations in both the Present and Present Perfect tenses.

News

Students announce fictional news to their group and further discuss the details in the past tense.

Describing Photos

Students describe what has been happening recently based on what they see in photos.

Present Perfect Conversation

Students practice different usages of the Present Perfect in a free discussion.

The Laptop's Charged

Students practice converting sentences that contain verbal phrases to adjectives.

Participle Discussion

Students discuss answers to conversation questions the employ participial adjectives used to describe feelings.

Grammar
Connecting the Past & Present #1

Students expand their understanding of the Present Perfect Simple by learning that it is a way to focus on connecting finished past actions with the present.

Connecting the Past & Present #2

Students learn that the Present Perfect Continuous can also be used to describe present situations.

Participial Adjectives

Students learn that many adjectives come in the form of present or past participles.

Reading
Four Green Cities

Reading activity about the cities of Reykjavik, San Francisco, Vancouver and Curitiba. The activity also serves as a review of Grammar - Connecting the Past & Present #1 and Connecting the Past & Present #2.

Use of English
Have You Heard

Four short conversations that serve as a lead in to Grammar - Participial Adjectives.

Writing
Spacing

Proper spacing rules are introduced and practiced in an exercise.

Proofreading

Students do a proofreading exercise, finding and correcting mistakes in a paragraph.

Paragraph

Students write a paragraph describing what their city has done to reduce pollution and deciding whether the city has done enough.

Vocabulary

acre

annoy

attention

back up

ban

carbon dioxide

charge

climate

complex

depend on

destructive

disappoint

effect

embarass

environmental

evidence

exhausted

fact

fortunate

frustrated

gasoline

get around

global

global warming

hybrid

issue

justification

organic

oxygen

pay

perhaps

plant

plug in

pollute

pollution

produce

protect

rainforest

resource

reusable

run #1

run #2

run out of

scientist

separate

shocking

solar

source

strict

supply

traditional

underground

unplug

use up

vegetarian

volcano

waste

keyboard_arrow_up