Rank the current affairs topics checking clarifying practice
current affairs vocabulary/ checking clarifying/ needs analysis/ first lesson
Student A
Together with your partner, try to rank the 20 current affairs topics below and on your partner’s worksheet by how interested you are in reading and speaking about them in class. You mustn’t show your list to your partner and you must each write the same list of 20 things in the same order, using checking and clarifying phrases when you need to. You don’t need to write the parts in brackets, just use those parts to help if your partner needs more explanation.
- Controversial topics (= topics that people have very strong and very different opinions about)
- Corporate scandals (= companies doing bad things)
- Domestic politics (= politics in Japan)
- Economic reform (= governments trying to improve the economy by changing things)
- Education reform (e.g. introducing TOEFL into university testing)
- Free trade (= being able to buy and sell between countries freely without paying tax)
- Futurology (= ideas about how thing like technology and working life will be in future)
- Health scares (e.g. SARS and bird flu)
- International development (for example helping poor people in developing countries such as Sudan and Burma)
- International politics (= politics in other countries, e.g. USA)
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Add any of your own ideas to that list, then share your top three and your ideas as a class.
For homework, prepare to talk about one recent news story for each of your top three topics (including your own ideas for topics if you would put those in your top three).
Student B
Together with your partner, try to rank the 20 current affairs topics below and on your partner’s worksheet by how interested you are in reading and speaking about them in class. You mustn’t show your list to your partner and you must each write the same list of 20 things in the same order, using checking and clarifying phrases when you need to. You don’t need to write the parts in brackets, just use those parts to help if your partner needs more explanation.
- International relations (= the relationships between countries, e.g. how well South Korea and Japan work together)
- Lifestyle (for example health foods, housing and fashion)
- Natural disasters (such earthquakes and tsunamis)
- New media (such as online newspapers and YouTube)
- Recent and forthcoming legislation (= new laws)
- Scientific developments (= discovering and inventing new things)
- Social issues (e.g. unemployment and homelessness)
- Tech (for instance the newest mobile phones and tablet computers)
- The environment (e.g. electric cars and recycling)
- White collar crime (for example insider trading)
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Add any of your own ideas to that list, then share your top three and your ideas as a class.
For homework, prepare to talk about one recent news story for each of your top three topics (including your own ideas for topics if you would put those in your top three).
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