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Teacher’s notes and key

- 1 -

TARTING OFF

The discussion will be more or less hypothetical, depending on the age of the class. For younger learners, for
whom leaving school may be a rather distant prospect, the questions can refer to their summer holidays. If
they have problems getting started, you can assign one topic to each group and ask them to consider pros and
cons for their topic; these can then be shared in open class.

EFORE YOUR READ

IRST READING

A straightforward initial reading task. In feedback you can ask if the learners know anyone who has taken a
year off in this way - any stories or anecdotes they can offer will be welcome.

ENTENCE CONSTRUCTION

Some of these sentences might be quite challenging and you may need to help them by providing first and last
words or by putting some the words into phrases to reduce the number of items. Key:

1.  Why is the idea of a gap year so popular?
2.  What is a gap year?
3.  What are some popular ways to spend a gap year?
4.  How do you organise a gap year?
5.  What do you do now?

ECOND READING

Key:

A. 5

B. 2

C. 1

D. 3

E. 4

OCABULARY

Key:

1. increasingly
2. worthwhile
3. nowadays

4. valuable
5. provide
6. voluntary

7. needy
8. wells
9. rewarding

10. living expenses

OCABULARY

The difference between ‘rewarding’ and ‘worthwhile’ is tricky. If they have trouble with this point out that both
are

positive but ‘rewarding’ means good for us in some way; worthwhile means good in general. Key:

1. rewarding
2. valuable
3. increasingly

4. well
5. provide
6. living expenses

7. needy
8. nowadays
9. worthwhile

10. voluntary

Teacher’s notes and key

- 2 -

PEAKING

This activity will benefit a lot from additional resources, if available: maps, the internet, a globe etc. Divide the
activity into three parts: discussion within the groups using the questions (around 10 minutes); preparation of
the presentations (around 5 minutes); and giving the presentations and answering questions (3-5 minutes per
group). Your role during these will vary: monitoring and helping with prompts and language during the
discussion and preparation stages and leading the questions after the presentations.

XTENSION

Obviously, there are several writing tasks which would come out of the presentations: designing a poster
advertising their projects, writing a letter to a newspaper to explain the project or writing an email to a
charitable organisation to introduce oneself and ask for more information on their activities - the learners could
choose a real organisation for this.

The topic also leads naturally into a more general discussion of charity and how much people help each other.
Some discussion questions:

Do we help others as much as we should?

Do people help each other more or less than they used to?

How can we help others as we go about our daily lives?

Who needs help in our society?

Is it a good idea to give people money on the street?

What do we feel when we see homeless people on the street?

Is it acceptable for there to be such great differences between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in our

society?

An interesting writing and speaking activity would be for the learners to design questionnaires on the topic of
how much we help each other/how selfish we are, then conducting the survey in class.

Contact

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for future editions of Around English.

Peter Moran

petersmaterials@gmail.com

- 3 -

So you’ve finished school. What do you do now?

For many, the next step will be university and further qualifications; for others, the world of work will
beckon. There is a third choice, however, which is increasingly popular these days: a gap year - a
year spent doing something new and worthwhile before work or studies. But is it worthwhile for you?

What is a gap year?

A gap year is a
year taken off
between finishing
school (at 18 or 19
years old) and
starting university
studies or starting
work. It is not a
holiday - a gap
year must be
planned carefully and have a clear goal which should
be something more worthy than just having fun or
making money.

Why is the idea of a gap year so
popular?

The idea of taking a gap year started after World War
II, when governments thought it would be a good way
to help young people from different countries to
understand one another better. Naturally, then, many
gap year projects involve going to another country for
some time - a great way to learn about other countries
and cultures.

Gap years became popular in the 1960s and 1970s,
when travelling to the third world became a trendy
thing for young people to do. Nowadays gap years are
seen as a great way of getting some experience of the
world and a very valuable thing to put later on a CV
when applying for a job. There are now many books,
websites and organisations which will provide help in
planning a gap year. Many people who take a year off
in this way later look back on it as a grand adventure -
sometimes even as the best year of their lives.

What are some popular ways to
spend a gap year?

There are many ways to spend a gap year. One of the
most popular and worthwhile is to spend the time
doing voluntary work in a needy country. This could
be teaching or helping to build wells in an African
village, for example, or planting trees or cleaning
rivers in Asia. Remember that this is voluntary work,
though - you will be paid enough to live on, but no
more.

Another option is to gain paid work experience in an
area which you are interested in - ecology, forestry,
construction, medicine. These kinds of jobs are not
well paid - usually you earn enough to live on and to
travel a little - but the experience is rewarding and the
experience looks very good on your CV.

How do you organise a gap year?

A gap year must be organised carefully. Quite apart
from the normal preparations for going abroad for any
length of time (visas, vaccinations etc.) it is important
to understand what you will be doing and to be sure
that you can do it for however long you will need to.
Building wells in Africa may sound very exciting, but it
is hard work and you need to be sure you can last
three, six or nine months doing it.

A gap year can be expensive as well. Your living
expenses are covered by your pay for your work, but
you will probably have to pay your own travel
expenses - and if you plan to go to Asia or Africa
those expenses might be considerable. So think
carefully before deciding on taking a year off. It can be
a wonderful experience, but it is certainly hard work
and certainly something you need to think through
very carefully.