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Caged In
A popular Indian film actor crammed himself into a tiny cage and asked for compassion for chickens as part of a "Compassion, Not Cages - Go Veg!" campaign by an international animal rights group. (Animal rights, vegetarians, protest, farming, 'so' linking two clauses.)
Elementary to Pre-Intermediate
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Coin Grab
A fun, communicative warmer that will keep you laughing.
Pre-Intermediate
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Vocabulary - happy and merry
A student from Vietnam wants to know the difference between happy and merry. Have a happy day!
Intermediate
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Four corners
This warmer is a good way of getting students moving and communicating with each other.
Pre-Intermediate
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Relative pronouns - What you mean
Guillermo in Spain has a student who has a lot of problems using that and what. Anna provides some advice on how to change that.
Intermediate
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In Love With My Car
A survey of drivers in the U.S. found that 63 percent actually talked to their cars, 43 percent said they considered their cars to be "part of the family," and 12 percent said they valued their cars more than anything else in their lives, including their children or their home. (Cars, automobiles, possessions, surveys, comparative language using 'more than' and 'less / fewer than'.)
Pre-Intermediate
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Ebola
The persistence of Congo's Ebola outbreak and its deadly spread to Uganda in recent days show how societal issues are as crucial as scientific advances in controlling disease outbreaks. (Health, diseases, preventing the spread of disease, present perfect simple and present perfect continuous.)
Intermediate
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It's a dog's life
A plush, furnished place with televisions, a Feng Shui garden, showers, piped music and an aromatherapy unit - for homeless dogs! Funded largely from money left in a will. (Wills, leaving money to people and organizations, debate, designing an advertisement, English expressions.)
Upper-Intermediate
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Vocabulary - False friends
Patrizia from Italy asks for help with words that could be the same - false friends.
Intermediate
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Silly Starters
This is a good warmer to use on the very first day of a new class to help students remember each other's names.
Pre-Intermediate
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Question tags
Valeria from Chile says she has had a lot of
problems finding information or exercises about questions tags so Anna offers some help.
Intermediate
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To get ..... or not?
Anna from Russia asks about being and getting hungry.
Intermediate
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Are you a giraffe?
This lively warmer is a nice complement to the many Instant Lessons with an animal topic. It ties in very nicely with the lesson "Shelter Pup Finds Career".
Pre-Intermediate
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Thief Trapped in Elevator
A thief who wanted to break into an apartment in the southern Swedish city of Malmo was rescued by police after spending 11 hours trapped in an elevator. (Crime, guessing by context, using 'because/and/however/so', using 'a/an/the'.)
Pre-Intermediate
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60 Years Among Stars
This lesson is about the famous cosmologist, Stephen Hawking. (Physics, cosmology, famous people, paragraph beginnings, question tags.)
Advanced
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Would You Like to See My Family?
This is a fun activity for lower level students to practise asking for things.
Pre-Intermediate
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Noun endings
A teacher from Germany asks for some help with noun endings and pronunciation.
Intermediate
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Shelter Pup Finds Career
A dog success story: A puppy left at a Toronto-area animal shelter last summer has risen through Canada's detector dog program to earn a job as a drug-sniffer. (Animals rescuing people stories, proverbs, word order.)
Intermediate
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A Moviemakers' Paradise
New Zealand, where the Lord of the Rings films were shot, is spending millions of dollars promoting itself as a movie makers' paradise, as well as encouraging tourists to come and see where Lord of the Rings was filmed: "New Zealand is Middle Earth,'' says actor Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo. (New Zealand, movie making, movies, prepositions.)
Upper-Intermediate to Advanced
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there were a?
Marie from France asks about "there" and verb agreement.
Intermediate
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Bah-Humbug!
A British man who went underground behind blast-proof doors and thick concrete to avoid a family Christmas emerged early. Why? Do this lesson to find out and also learn the story of another Scrooge.
Intermediate
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Psychologist
A warmer to work out a common problem. The problem could be an agreed upon language problem and the "psychologist" asks questions to try to guess what that problem is.
Intermediate
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Super Milkman!
British milkman Steve Leech, who saved a row of shops and flats by dousing a fire with 320 pints of milk, has been named "Hero Milkman of the Millennium" by the National Dairymen's Association. (Fire safety, bravery, guessing vocabulary by context, nationality words, surveys.)
Pre-Intermediate
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Ring's Rave Reviews
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'' and "The Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring," both films set in a fantasy world of magic, wizards and young heroes, have been crossing swords at the box office. Critics gave "Harry Potter" five stars. What did they give "Lord of the Rings"? (Movies, critics, movie ratings, movie vocabulary, "as...as" used to make comparisons, playing charades.)
Upper-Intermediate
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Have you ever seen so many photos?
An entertaining warmer to practise making questions and getting information from a classmate using the present perfect.
Pre-Intermediate
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Prepositions of place
A teacher working in China asks how she can help her students better use prepositions of place.
Intermediate
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Teen Offenders
Certain factors can help predict if a troubled teen will return to the "straight and narrow'' with treatment or continue to be an aggressive and emotionally disturbed individual, according to New Hampshire researchers. (Health, society, teenagers, vocabulary in context, correcting grammar errors.)
Upper-Intermediate
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Gooooooaaaaaal!
Soccer: "The referee found the ball at his feet in front of the goal, kicked it into the net, then signaled a goal." The referee later resigned. This is a strange sports story. (Soccer, sports, referees, umpires, judges, guessing vocabulary by context, using 'when' and 'while' to connect two actions in the past.)
Upper-Intermediate
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Finnish Grapes
Grapes will soon ripen for wine production in Finland using warm water from a nuclear reactor cooling system. (Technology, farming, dictionary work, using 'will' to talk about a future fact.)
Elementary
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Vocabulary - Duper
A student in Brazil wanted more information about the word "duper" so Anna gives Andrea a hand.
As an update, Anna also responds to more letters about this word: one from Deborah in New Zealand and another from Beth in the USA.
Intermediate Lesson Updated: 7 February 2002
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English stories are boring
Peter from Hong Kong asks whether Anna thinks his teacher is correct about the need to read more English stories.
Intermediate
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I Saw You Last Weekend
This is a good Monday morning warmer that will make even the more timid students speak up.
Intermediate
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Birds of a Feather
Singapore is fighting an army of crows plaguing its high-rise apartments. Rome is battling swarms of starlings that swoop down on Rome's historic piazzas and baroque churches by broadcasting bird "distress calls'' over loudspeakers. (Scientific study, pests, proverbs, writing letters, relative clauses.)
Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate
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Wild Elephants
Wild elephants killed four people and injured 15 others while rampaging through two villages in southeastern Bangladesh. (Problems related to protecting endangered animals, elephants, the Simple Past and Simple Present Tenses.)
Elementary
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The Drinks are on Me
A businessman offered to pay for everybody's drinks at a British nightclub, and ended up with a bill for more than 42,000 pounds ($59,000). (Alcohol rules and laws, drinking alcohol, spending a lot of money on others, non-defining relative clauses.)
Pre-Intermediate
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Verb forms - Present perfect simple and continuous
Elisabeth from France asks about "unfinished actions".
Intermediate
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World's Oldest Man Dies
The world's oldest man, 112-year-old Antonio Todde from Sardinia, has died. His life has been a part of a scientific study. A remarkable number of Sardinia's 1.6 million inhabitants live through a century. Some 135 people per million live to see their 100th birthday while the western average is nearer 75. (Secrets of a long life, habits and lifestyle, scientific studies, prepositions.)
Intermediate
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Knitwise
Max talks about the history of such warming words as cardigan, jersey, sweater, jumper, pullover and balaclava.
Intermediate
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Fluency Dice
Jane from the UK says this is a really popular and motivating warmer with her students.
Intermediate
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Traveling Great Whites
Great white sharks have always been thought to stay in their own small territories. However, a new study shows that these massive creatures are in fact world travelers, with some swimming thousands of miles into the open ocean on mysterious migrations. (The passive, punctuation, Internet research)
Upper-Intermediate
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Amnesia
This warmer is a good way of practising questions and Eliana from Brazil says her students have a lot of fun with it.
Pre-Intermediate
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Participle clauses
Cherie's 'friend' from New Zealand wants to know about relative clauses and participles. Anna helps out ...
Intermediate
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Warning: Money
Do you think that having lots of money can make you become a nicer person? See what Americans think! Can it make you happy? A British survey seems to think so! (Money, surveys, wealth, modal verbs 'can' & 'can't')
Pre-Intermediate
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What You Read is What You Get
A London real estate agency believes in telling it like it is in its advertisements, for example: "Almost certainly the scruffiest two-bedroom flat we've seen for a long time." (Real estate ads, honesty in descriptions, euphemisms, writing descriptions of houses, adjectives, adjective order, describing things in positive and negative ways.)
Upper-Intermediate
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Stowaway Cat
This is about an international rescue mission to rescue a New Zealand cat that stowed away on a ship to South Korea. (Ships, ports, rescue, stowaway, quarantine, phone call, use of "tried to... but... too...".)
Elementary
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We Do!
Policemen in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh played fathers of the bride when an orphan they raised at their police station got married. (Police, weddings, public safety and rescue workers, different forms of the word "marry".)
Pre-Intermediate
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Find A Good Match
In order to review vocabulary and phonetic transcription, students need to find someone who has a card that matches theirs.
Intermediate
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Used to
Anna settles an argument on ways to present the auxiliary verb 'used to' to a class.
Intermediate
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Stolen Animals
Criminals steal an estimated 38 million animals from Brazil's forests each year. A recent report has estimated that local traffickers of endangered animals earn about $1 billion a year, causing untold losses to the country's natural habitat. (Smuggling, synonyms, the passive, participle clauses, word forms, suffixes.)
Upper-Intermediate
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Vocabulary - Chic
Anna looks at the comparative forms of this word and talks about pronunciation.
Intermediate
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