AN UPDATE TO A CLASSIC ELT ACTIVITY USING BUGS

There are so many ELT activities out there for teachers use, adapt and have success with in terms of quality student outcomes.  Many have become outdated, and not moved with the times; whereas others can still be effective if they are brought up to modern times with the advent of ICT-in-ELT.  One such classic activity is the "What would you do if you had to survive on / or travel to a desert island?" i.e. What items, things etc would you need if you were in that position?  This is asked of the students, and they have to make a list.  Of course, as a language teacher, the activity would not be worthwhile unless some grammar or language component was added for production and practice.

There are many possible add-ins, and for this section of our syllabus, we decided to use the 

2nd or Unreal Conditional:

         "If I was/were stuck on a desert island, I would need/ have / take + noun..."

         "If I went on holiday to a paradise island, I would need / take + noun..."

Here is the BLENDSPACE of the activity which displays and explains how to do the first part of the lesson using De Caprio's "The Beach", and the second part which has the modern twist (of sorts).

LESSON PART 2

The horrific advent of reality tv shows has meant the proliferation of various ideas and concepts disguised as entertainment and "good" tv.  From Big Brother where several rather uninteresting people are herded together and imprisoned in a house until they are eliminated one by one, week by week. In the early days these shows would command millions of couch potatoes overly excited and engaged in the utter nonsense.  However, that format became tired, so, as with all tv, it has now evolved into locations, exotic or otherwise, and "normal" Joe Public has been replaced by so-called minor celebrities, who are filmed in jungles, on desert islands and in very uncomfortable situations where their tenacity, bravery and downright stupidity are put to the test.  

The show we included in this lesson, and the one that really got our students worked up and seriously reactionary interested was. "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here."

The episode we used, taken from YouTube, and shown below, with George Takei, from The Star Trek franchise, being made to eat different species of live insects in order to get main course and beverage credit later that day.  This, in theory, is to enable him to survive. 

Watch it now to get a sense of why our students were going crazy when they saw it.

The question we then posed was, "What would you eat, if you were George Takei?" 

(The question embedded with the unreal conditional to let students here it being used.)

The great thing was to see the students' reactions to the "celebrity" being faced with his gourmet meals and his brave effort to swallow the living bugs.

ADD-ON EXTENSION ACTIVITY

There is another extract from the horrible show described above.  This time another celebrity, not George, is asked to stick her head in a photocopier (in the Jungle? --OF COURSE!!) and retrieve three objects that are under the lid.  The only problem is there are hundreds of giant cockroaches squirming about.  Dohh... We are going to do it tomorrow on the last day before the holiday...