LESSON OVERVIEW

In this lesson, students learn vocabulary useful when talking about fear or relief, watch a video about horror films, and describe situations in which they felt uneasy or scared. 

VOCABULARY

The lesson starts with a warm-up activity in which students rank things from a list from the most to the least scary (e.g. heights, injections, germs). They compare their rankings in pairs and decide how similar or different they are. Then, students read ten sentences and try to work out meanings of some lexis from the context (e.g. sinister, disturbing, adrenaline junkie, fight-or-flight response). The words and phrases from the sentences can be used when talking about fear or shock. After that, they match the words and phrases from the sentences with their definitions. They also need to answer a set of questions to check their understanding of the new lexis (e.g. What kinds of scenes in a TV programme might be considered disturbing?). 

VIDEO & DESCRIBING CHALLENGING SITUATIONS

Before watching a video about horror films (note that some students may find the images in the video disturbing), students discuss the genre and what they think makes people like it. Then, they watch the video for the first time and check their answers to the questions in the previous exercise. During the second viewing, they complete seven sentences with words or phrases from the video. After that, students discuss the films mentioned in the video and other horror films, as well as their features. In the last part of the lesson, students match sentence halves to create phrases used when talking about fear, shock, surprise and relief (e.g. …it sent shivers down my spine, …almost jumped out of my skin, breathe a sigh of relief). Then, they look at a list of situations (e.g. speaking in public, attending a job interview) and describe a time in their lives when some of the situations took place. They discuss how they felt in these situations. Finally, students write an anecdote based on one of the situations.