News lessons japan pm’s solution to dire birth rate has already been rejected by young Level 3

4. Key language
a. Students could be asked to do this exercise 
individually, and then compare their answers in pairs. 
The answers given are the phrases used in the text. 
All of these are idiomatic phrases. For item 1, Follow 
the script is also possible, as is think again in item 4. 
The last phrase is a slight variation on the more 
common expression put your money on something.
Key:
1. drag into the depths of despair 
2. heed the call 
3. stick to the script
4. think twice 
5. now or never 
6. the smart money must be on
b. Ask students to use the phrases in their own 
sentences. If they need more support, you can 
provide sentences stems like:
• I always stick to the script when …
• If …, I would heed the call.
• I’d think twice before …
• If I want to …, it’s now or never.
1. Warmer 
a. The purpose of this activity is to introduce the topic 
of population trends and to get students thinking 
about why a country’s low birth rate could be an 
issue. At this stage, you could just establish that 
birth rate can be provided as births per 1,000 people 
in a population and is not always synonymous with 
number of births. Have students share knowledge 
about demographic trends around the world and 
hypothesise reasons for and consequences of 
these trends.
2. Key words 
a. Ask students to do the exercise individually, and then 
compare their answers in pairs or small groups. The 
word crass is generally offensive when describing 
people. Most of the other words in this set are formal 
(except for gaffe, a more formal synonym would 
be faux pas). The word prong is often used with a 
number, as in ‘two-prong plan/programme/campaign’. 
Key:
1. pronouncement; pronouncements
2. dysfunction
3. doomsayer; doomsayers
4. insurmountable
5. prong; pronged
6. crass
7. Dystopian; dystopian