Welcome to London

In this lesson students practice vocabulary of famous places in London, listen to a light-hearted recording of a guided tour on an open top bus in London, check their comprehension, and then do a speaking activity based on the listening.

1. Pre-listening tasks (10-15 mins)

• Write London on the board. Ask students to tell you what they know about this city. Have they been to London? Do they know any famous places in London? Explain that you are going to say the first part of a famous place in London and that they have to complete the name. Put the students into teams, ask for hands up to complete the names, and give a point for each correct answer. Use these places: Big Ben, London Eye, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, Oxford Street, Madame Tussauds. Give help if necessary e.g., ‘Is it Big Bob or Big Ben?’ • Hand out the worksheet or display the ‘preparation’ task to the class. Ask students to work in pairs to match the place names and the pictures of famous places. Tip: before the lesson print a copy of the answers for you to use in class. • Ask students how tourists usually visit these famous places. Do they go by train, taxi, or tourist bus? Point out the open-top bus in the preparation task. Ask who usually talks to the tourists about the famous places during a tour on a bus? (A tour guide.) Display the image of a London bus tour from the link above. Can students describe what they see in pairs?

1. Listening x 1 (5 -10 mins)

Students now look at the ‘check your understanding: multiple choice’ task on the worksheet or website. Play the audio again and students select the correct answers. Students compare in pairs before checking answers as a class.

Ask students what the weather was like on the tour. (It was raining heavily.) Write the following on the board – history, umbrellas, famous people, the queen, shopping, money. Students copy the list. Tell the students that now they are going to listen carefully to the tourist rather than the tour guide. Play the audio a final time and students must now underline the topics that the tourist mentions. (Umbrellas, the Queen, money). Can they remember the actual questions that the tourist asked? Tip: Your students can refer to the audio transcript if you like but they don’t need to understand every word –encourage them to check with a dictionary later

1. Role play

• Ask the students which places tourists can visit in their city, town or village. They could choose a capital city with world famous places or just their local area. Compile of list on the board – let a volunteer write and the others dictate. • Tell the class to imagine that they are on a guided tour visiting the places listed on the board. Some people are tour guides and others are tourists. First they need to do some preparation. • Ask for volunteers (4 students in a class of 16, 8 in a class of 32) to be tour guides. The rest of the class are tourists. Give the appropriate part of the role play worksheet to the students. • Tour guides prepare their speeches in pairs or small groups. Tourists prepare their questions in small groups. Encourage tourists to prepare lots of questions because they want to practise their English! If tour guides finish their preparation quickly, ask them to memorise their speech. Monitor the groups and help where necessary. Set a time limit for preparation. • Put students in small groups (with one tour guide and several tourists) to act out the role play, following instructions on their handout. Arrange chairs in rows like bus seats if possible. Invite groups to perform their role play to the class. Tip: One way to put a large class into groups, is to assign each person a letter (A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D etc) then ask for a show of hands up (‘Hands up student A’ etc) to check they were paying attention. Then ask all A’s to sit/stand together, all B’s together and so on. • Make notes of any common errors and good language or pronunciation for class feedback at the end of the lesson.