Reading

e-lesson Week starting: July 5, 2010
1. You’re never too old
This week’s lesson is based on descriptions of four impressive achievements by older people, three of which are true and one of which has been invented.

Level
Pre-intermediate and above (equivalent to CEF level A2(B1 and above)

How to use the lesson
1. Ask your students to give examples of impressive achievements on the part of older people – either famous older people or older people they know personally, such as family members. Do your students think older people are treated well in their country? Do they think younger people sometimes have incorrect assumptions about older people? Encourage them to justify/explain their answers.

2. Divide your students into pairs, then hand out Worksheet A and give them five to ten minutes to read through it. Encourage them to look up new vocabulary. Can they identify which three achievements are true and which one has been made up?

3. Check answers in open class, and encourage your students to explain what factors influenced their choices. Answers: The true cases are 1, 3, and 4; the story of 95-year-old athlete Ed Puma (2) has been invented. Extremely observant students might have noticed that “Ed Puma” is an anagram of “made up.”

4. Keeping your students in their pairs, hand out Worksheet B and ask them to complete the crossword.

5. Check answers in open class.

6. Ask the students to put away Worksheets A and B or to temporarily hand them back to you. Then, keeping the students in pairs, hand out Worksheet C, which contains most of the text from Worksheet A, and give them another ten minutes for the blank-fill exercise, in which they have to complete the missing words. If the students cannot remember what the words are, encourage them to try to figure them out from the context of the sentence. You might also want to point out that some of the words feature in the glossary (or, to make it more difficult, you could ask the students not to use their glossaries).

7. Check answers in open class.


Answers:

Exercise 1
1. epitaph 2. achievements 3. appearing 4. escapologist 5. China 6. performance 7. see 8. locked 9. coffin 10. veterans 11. despair 12. Australia 13. set 14. type
If the sentences have been completed correctly, The Life of Riley will read from top to bottom. (If you wish, you could explain the play on words: as well as Riley being Olive’s last name, “the life of Riley” is an expression meaning an easy and pleasant life.)

Exercise 2
1. still 2. country 3. Championships 4. over 5. against 6. talk shows 7. take care of 8. performing 9. lock 10. flames 11. drowned 12. box 13. nails 14. blogger 15. aged 16. entries 17. put 18. eyesight 19. popular
20. in touch with

2. Related Websites
Send your students to these websites, or just take a look yourself.

http://stories.onewebday.org/?p=154
An article (2009) about Olive Riley and another older American blogger, Ruth Hamilton. Challenging for pre-intermediate level.

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=99493724
A Reuters video news clip (2010) about Dorothy de Low, the 100-year-old ping pong player. Accessible to pre-intermediate level.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1566377/The-Great-Omani.html
“The Great Omani” Ron Cunningham’s obituary (2007) on the Telegraph British news site. Challenging for pre-intermediate level.