LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• explore and practise financial crimes vocabulary;
• watch an explainer video about money laundering;
• discuss financial crimes and their implications.

With this lesson, students study words and phrases (e.g. fraud, bribe, extortion, etc.) to talk about financial crimes. They watch an explainer video about how money laundering works, talk about financial crimes in films and real life, and discuss real cases of financial fraud and organized crime. Students also read a film synopsis and talk about their personal opinions on how criminals and financial crimes are depicted in films and media.

FINANCIAL CRIMES VOCABULARY AND VIDEO

This lesson starts with a warm-up where students look at the lesson title and say how it is linked to the words greed, knowledge and anxiety. After that, they complete statements about financial crimes with the correct form of words (e.g. counterfeit, evade, embezzle, etc.). Then, students explore financial crimes vocabulary and do tasks in which they examine the words more closely. Next, students watch a video about money laundering and choose the best summary for it. Afterwards, they read excerpts from the video and complete gaps with words or phrases (e.g. mark up, bank runs, legitimate, etc.). Then, they watch the video again and check their answers. Following that, students look at the words and phrases they completed and explain their meanings.

DISCUSSION

In the next part of this lesson, students practise financial crimes vocabulary and discuss money laundering and its implications, prevention methods, and challenges in international cooperation. Then, they use words and phrases (e.g. marked up, fraudulent, flagged, etc.) to complete the gaps in texts about infamous cases of financial fraud and organized crime. After that, students look at the texts and discuss questions about their opinions on financial crimes, including a criminal’s motivations, prevalence, and representation in the media. Following that, students read a film synopsis and complete statements about perceptions and portrayals of criminals and financial crimes in films with their own ideas.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. They complete gaps with one word to practise financial crimes vocabulary. Then, they choose three sentences and use one of the words in brackets to say what happened next. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.