INTRODUCTION

The title of this unit suggests that the topic that we are going to deal with is food and drink, in general, though we have tried to take advantage from it and have also included interesting subjects such as meals from different countries, nutrition, food disorders, the dangers of an unhealthy diet, the obsession of some teenagers with food and image and an original topic like ‘nomadic consumption’, in vogue these days.

DESCRIPTION

The main grammatical contents of the unit are conditional sentences. we thought that the command of conditional sentences would be appropriate for the development of oral skills in the students; in this sense we thought they would be useful to express opinion and give advice in relation with the topic (If you eat too much fast food you’ll have health problems in the future/ If Mr Firth had not eaten so much salt when he was young, his blood pressure wouldn’t be so high.)

OBJECTIVES (apartado 3 de la wiki)

CONTENTS: CONCEPTS

Reading: a text about fast food eaten in the street called ‘Nomadic Consumption’; reading strategy: guessing the meaning of words; grammar: conditional sentences (first, second and third type); first conditional + unless; vocabulary: food and drink, health problems related with food; countable/uncountable nouns; listening: dictation/people talking about dishes from different countries/people talking about their eating habits, a doctor talking to her patients about nutrition; pronunciation: emphasis (e.g. I like fish; I hate meat/ I like fish not meat); speaking: your favourite food, your eating habits, bad habits in daily life, eating disorders, diets; writing: a discussion essay; writing strategy: how to begin and end an essay; everyday English: “in a café”, conversations in which food and drinks are commanded in a café or restaurant.

CONTENTS:PROCEDURES

Procedures:• Reading a text about fast food.• Revising the grammar structures of conditional sentences by

recognising these structures in oral and written texts, doing exercises to assimilate the structure and using them appropriately when we speak and write.

• Learning about types of food and recognising bad eating habits by reading texts and listening to people talking about the topic.

• Talking about your favourite food, making conversations in class, talking with other partners and interchanging opinions and ideas and listening to different opinions.

• Writing a discussion essay about fast food, teenagers and food disorders, paying attention to the way we begin and end an essay.

CONTENTS:ATTITUDES

Attitudes:• Showing interest in knowing the vocabulary and the

linguistic structures necessary for the basic communication.• Assessing the English language as a means for widening

one’s knowledge about the external world.• Acknowledging the importance of being able to

communicate in both oral and written English.• Showing interest in knowing new people, cultures and

habits especially Anglo-Saxon food and eating habits (ingredients, time of meals, etc)

• Accepting other students’ likes/dislikes.• Showing active participation in class and a positive attitude

and behaviour towards the teacher and the partners.

METHODOLOGY

The methodological approach that we normally use in our daily practice and, logically, the one proposed for our didactic syllabus, and obviously for this unit, is the communicative approach. This method integrates all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

EVALUATIONEvaluation of the students and achievement of aims: From the very beginning we must be alert and detect any problem that (any of) the students may have. For this purpose we can observe directly and generally evaluate comprehension, previous knowledge, fluency, as well as cleanliness of notebook, compositions, attitude in class and towards teacher/classmates, etc. When it comes to evaluate concepts and skills more specifically we can do the following: in reading activities we can check comprehension, fluency and pronunciation, when we ask students to read aloud and ask them key questions about the reading. In speaking activities we can check not only pronunciation and fluency but also strategic competence (that is, the ability of the student to communicate successfully using communication strategies because their knowledge of the target language is incomplete), attitude in class (cooperative, talkative, shy) and pronunciation. Listening activities are good to detect the weaknesses and difficulties of the students when it comes to interpret the oral sounds of the target language. Writing skills can be evaluated in terms of correctness, use of appropriate words and expressions, cleanliness, punctuation, creativity, etc.