Inside Out

e-lesson Week starting: 4th August 2008

1. The Beijing Olympic Games

This week’s lesson focuses on the huge international sports event beginning in China on
8th August: the Olympic Games.
Level
Intermediate and above (equivalent to CEF level B1 and above)
How to use the lesson
1. Ask your students if they like watching the Olympic Games on television. If so, which are
their favourite events, and why? Are there any specific events in which their country is
expected to do particularly well?
2. Divide the students into pairs and give them five to ten minutes to read the text on
Worksheet A, encouraging them to look up new vocabulary. Tell them that in the next
exercise they are going to fill in the gaps with appropriate words. You could suggest that they
guess what the words might be.
3. When the time is up, hand out Worksheet B and give the students another five to ten
minutes to fill in the gaps using the correct words from the box in Exercise 1. Make it clear
that there is only one possible word to fill each gap, and that there are four extra words which
should not be used.
4. Check answers in open class.
Answers: 1. doubt 2. competing 3. expected 4. running 5. seen 6. venue
7. appearance 8. audiences 9. building 10. table 11. bet 12. surprises
Words that should not be used: feared, winning, journalists, disaster
5. Keeping the students in their pairs, ask them to turn over their copies of Worksheet A, or to
hand them back to you temporarily. Then ask them to attempt Exercise 2 on Worksheet C,
which contains the text from Worksheet A with twenty mistakes that they have to find and
correct. Point out that the mistakes are all grammatical or lexical, and that no correction
requires them to write more than one additional word.
6. Check answers in open class.
Answers: See Worksheet D.
7. If you wish, hand out copies of Worksheet D to the students after you have identified the
mistakes on Worksheet C.

2. Related Websites
Send your students to these websites, or just take a look yourself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7490000/newsid_7498600/7498632.stm
From BBC Newsround, an article looking at some of the athletes who have been tipped to win
gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. Appropriate for intermediate level.
http://en.beijing2008.cn/
The official website of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Intermediate level and above.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/default.stm
The section of the BBC Sport website dedicated to the 2008 Olympic Games. Intermediate
level and above.
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