LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this lesson are to:
- read an article about how to handle awkward questions;
- discuss tricky situations and personal boundaries;
- practise phrases to deflect uncomfortable questions.
Students talk about personal and sensitive questions, explore strategies to respond to them and practice setting boundaries. They work with phrases related to uncomfortable situations (e.g. open a can of worms, pry into, tread carefully), discuss to what extent they agree with some ideas and share their experiences and opinions. Students also analyse different responses to handle sensitive topics, imagine they are unwilling to answer questions and create one-liners to deflect them.
This is a Critical Reading Club worksheet. With this format, students need to read an online article at home and do the exercises in the classroom. Learn more about how to use such worksheets and their benefits in our post.
ACTIVITIES
This lesson starts with a warm-up. Students look at three questions and decide when it is appropriate or inappropriate to ask them. Moving on, they match the halves of sentences about handling personal questions. Then, students find phrases (e.g. on the defensive, airing dirty laundry) in the previous task to complete sentences about sensitive situations. Afterwards, they discuss the ideas from the previous exercise, agreeing or disagreeing with them. Following that, students discuss managing sensitive topics. Next, they match example responses (e.g. If I told you, I’d have to kill you) with the appropriate strategy (deflecting with humour). Students then share opinions on the strategies for handling busybodies. After that, they discuss situations (e.g. So, when’s your turn? – relative at a wedding). Students say whether they find them inappropriate and use the target phrases from the lesson. Finally, they practise deflecting the questions by creating one-liners using the strategies they learned.