Of the republic of uzbekistan tashkent state pedagogical university named after nizami

Stage 1 – Agree or disagree
This activity is used to help quiet students express their opinions more non-verbally expressing agreement and disagreement. All students in the class participate in this activity and give their own opinion on the given arguments. The students are given a handout with 12 statements. They read them and write ‘A’ for agree or ‘D’ for disagree under each statement, working alone.
In this example the statements are all in the passive to revise the grammar from the previous lesson. Difficult vocabulary may include ‘pocket money,’ ‘banned’ and ‘punished.’


1stage 2 stage

Stage 2 – Choosing topics
Each student then chooses 4 to 6 topics they would like to discuss and draws a circle around each of them. They think about how they will express their opinion for each one and an example sentence is written on the board for them to follow:
“I think children should/shouldn’t be given pocket money because…”
Stage 3 – Mingle
Students stand up, move around the class and partner with someone they weren’t sitting next to. They take turns giving their opinions following the structure on the board, then swap partners. After they’ve each spoken to two or three people ask them to add opinions they’ve heard from other people:
“I think children should be given pocket money because… but James thinks they shouldn’t be given pocket money because…”
After they’ve spoken to two more people they sit back down. They then talk in pairs for two minutes trying to remember all of the opinions that they heard from other people.
Stage 4 – Discussion
The class is split into groups of 4 or 5 and given a set of discussion cards which use the same statements as the handout (and are included in the same file). Make sure that no one is grouped with someone they were just speaking to in pairs.
Students take turns drawing a card, giving their opinion on the statement and asking the rest of the group for their opinions. If there is a disagreement they discuss the statement, but if everyone agrees they just move onto the next card.
It’s up to you how long you allow for the discussion as the time it’ll take a group to finish all of the cards varies wildly.