Where were you ...?

This activity can be used as semi-controlled practice of the target language. There are worksheets for two levels, elementary to pre-intermediate and intermediate and above.

Preparation

Choose an event that was significant for you and your learners. You need to be able to remember what you were doing when you heard about it, e.g. when your child was born, when your team won the World Cup, etc. Choose something relevant to your learners' culture.

Download the appropriate worksheet below and make copies for each of your students.

Procedure

• Explain the event to your learners. Use the following as prompts:

1. What the event was
2. Where you were
3. What you were doing
4. How you felt
5. What you did after you heard about the event

• Encourage your learners to ask you more questions.
• Elicit examples of other events that were important for your learners, either personal or public. Write these on the board.
• Ask your learners to choose one event to write about.
• Hand out the worksheet and ask the learners to write about their experience.
• Monitor the writing work and guide as you think appropriate.
• Get students to share their experiences.

Follow-up activities

• Collect written work and correct in any way appropriate.
• Correct work and then ask learners to present their work to the class.
• Correct work with learners, and then 'publish' group work, e.g. by displaying on walls, on a class blog or website, etc.
• Ask learners to talk about their experiences in pairs and then report back to the class.
• Ask learners to develop a questionnaire based on their work, to ask others.