Review the most important English tenses through the story of a blind date while improving grammar accuracy and relationship vocabulary.
Main objectives of this material
- Develop vocabulary related to attention and digital habits, including terms such as brain rot, attention span, cognitive skills, reverse causation, compulsive, get hooked on, FOMO and set boundaries around, through an eight-item matching task, an eight-sentence first-letter recall check, a gapped homework text and 20 flashcards.
- Strengthen listening and critical thinking skills by analysing the BBC interview with Joss Fong of Howtown, which reports that only 10 to 30 minutes of swiping through short-form video affected people's ability to pause and think critically and to remember planned tasks, while watching the same clips as a montage did not, and by sorting seven claims into science, opinion or unknown.
- Learn and practise the language of habits and regrets using used to be able to, I'm finding it harder to, I wish + past simple, I wish I could, I wish I hadn't and I shouldn't have, so that learners can describe lost abilities, screen habits they want to change and past moments they regret.
What students are going to cover
In this lesson, students will explore whether brain rot is real through a BBC Global interview with science journalist Joss Fong, watched at home before class. Pre-class work includes a gist question, seven true-or-false statements, an eight-item vocabulary matching task and a six-sentence noticing task. In class, students complete an eight-sentence quick check and sort seven claims into science, opinion or unknown, learning how reverse causation can hide in correlational research. The language focus covers habits and regrets with a meaning match, a pattern table and seven rewrite items. Students then talk about their own screen habits, suggest boundaries for three people inspired by Joss Fong's "monkey playing a trumpet" metaphor, and debate whether creators should keep making short-form videos. The homework is a ten-gap recall text and a 150-180 word text or 90-second voice note about a three-day phone challenge. The package adds a teacher version, an interactive PDF, 22 slides, 20 flashcards and 24 speaking cards. By the end of the lesson, learners will be able to explain what the studies found and what is still unknown, describe their own habits and regrets with used to be able to and wish, and propose realistic boundaries for phone use.
🔒 Part of Complete · B2 · C1
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