World Cities

This lesson plan is used mainly for ESL students who do business with people in other cities and countries. The aim is to increase knowledge of famous things, people and environment of international cities.

1. Learning world city names in English.
2. Practice speaking about famous things in world cities.
3. Describing cities using appropriate language regarding cities.
   

1. Learn the qualities of what makes a city.*

*For a class that is longer than one hour, more time can be focused on learning new vocabulary. 

For a 1 hour class, teachers should prepare a vocabulary sheet for students to save time.

Warm Up

1.  Pair students and ask them to discuss what their hometown is famous for. Things they may say: Festivals, gardens, food, music.
2. After their pair work, get the students to tell another partner about their previous partner's hometown.

Main Activities

1. Get students to one at a time give an English name of an international city.  Choose one student to write the city names on the write board.
2. Have the students join into partners now.  With their partner they have to choose one city from the list on the board and tell the other student what they know about the city.
3. After finishing activity 2, have the students tell the class what their partner said about the city they chose.
4. Students as a group discuss with the teacher what it would take to make the perfect city.  Here the students focus on different aspects of a city: Education, Transportation, Economy, Health Care, Food, Entertainment, Housing, ect.
5. The last activity should be about living in a new country where both English and their native language is not spoken.  Get the students to discuss as a large group, what the challenges would be and how could they overcome them.
   

The only materials needed is an optional world map in English.*  This will come in handy if your students are not familiar with world geography.

*For a 1 hour class, it is a good idea to think of vocabulary words students will need to know for this lesson and photocopy a list to be handed out.  This will save time, and keep the class flowing.

Vocabulary:

1. Population

2. Transportation

3. Air pollution

4. Night life

5. Lifestyle

6. Buzz 

7. City's pulse

8. Tourist Center

9. Downtown

10. Districts

11. Health care

12. Economy

This class has many activities.  Do not spend more than 10 minutes per activity or you will run out of time for a 1 hour class.  On the other hand, this class can easily be stretched into a 2 hour class by extending each activity by 5 minutes and increasing the number of partners students have to talk with.

Hope you enjoy,

 Joshmantis.