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  6 When Nott did the operation he had _____ medicalproducts.

  a a lot of  b a small number of c no7 The boy is now _____.

  a very ill b a bit better c much betterAnswers: 1 b 2 c 3 a 4 b 5 a 6 b 7 c

5 Students read again with dictionaries and answer thesequestions. Feedback. 10 mins

  a Which charity did Nott work for? b Was this the first operation for the boy?c Why did Nott decide to do the amputation?d What medical products did Nott have?

Answers: a Médecins sans Frontières. b No. c Because theshoulder was badly infected. d A pint of blood, a scalpeland some anaesthetic.

6 Divide the class into A/B pairs. The A students are DavidNott and the B students are journalists. Put the B stu-dents into groups to think of questions to askNott. Forexample, How did you feel before the operation? etc. Putthe A students into similar groups. They think of possibleinformation about him — how he felt at the time etc. In

 A/B pairs students then do the interview. 15 mins

News-based English language activities from the global newspaper

Level≥  Lower intermediateStyle≥  Lesson plan

January 2009

Welcome to the Guardian Weekly’s special news-based materials to support learners and teachers of English.

Each month, the Guardian Weekly newspaper selects topical news articles that can be used to practise English

language skills. The materials are graded for two levels: advanced and lower intermediate. These worksheets

can be downloaded free from guardianweekly.co.uk/learningenglish/. You can also find more advice for

teachers and learners on the site.

1 Tell students the article is about a man who works asa volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Establish the meaning of volunteer and charity . Show thephoto, minus headline, and elicit that the man is a sur-geon. 4 mins

2 Tell students they are going to work as a volunteer for ayear. What will they do? Go through ideas as a class egwork with homeless people in their country or help builda school for street children in Kolkata. Students discussplans with a partner. Feedback. 10 mins

3 Write the headline. Students speculate what happenedin the news story. 4 mins

4 Give out these questions and go through any unknownwords. Hand out copies of the article. Students read andanswer. 12 mins

  1 David Nott operated on _____.  a a baby boy b a teenager c two teenage boys  2 The surgeon needed to operate on the boy’s _____.  a hand b arm c shoulder  3 Nott’s colleague _____ the instructions.  a texted b texted and phoned c texted and emailed

4 The boy only had a few _____ to live.  a hours b days c weeks

  5 It was the _____ time that Nott had done this operation.  a first b second c third

Surgeon carries out amputation by textMaterials prepared by Janet Hardy-Gould

InstructionsLesson focus: reading, conducting an interviewMaterials sheet: copies of the article, dictionariesTime: 55 minutes

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1 A British surgeon in the Democratic Republic of theCongo saved the life of a teenage boy by amputating hisshoulder, using instructions texted to him by a colleague.

2 David Nott, 52, a surgeon at a London hospital, was work-ing with the charity Médecins sans Frontières when hecame across the badly injured 16-year-old.

3 The teenager’s left arm had been so badly damaged, eitherin an accident or as a result of the fighting in the country,

that it had already been amputated. But the flesh and bone that remained had become badly infected.

4 “He was dying,” said Nott. “He had about two or three daysto live.”

5 The doctor realised the boy’s best chance of survivalwas amputation of the collar bone and shoulder blade.The only problem was that it was an operation Nott hadnot done before. But he remembered that one of his col-leagues at home had performed the procedure.

6 “I texted him and he texted back step-by-step instruc-tions,” Nott said. “I had to think long and hard aboutwhether it was right to leave a young boy with only onearm in the middle of this fighting.

7 “But he would have died without it, so I took a deep breathand followed the instructions to the letter.”

8 Such an operation, if performed in the UK, would requireevery sort of modern medical product on hand if thingswent wrong.

9 “The boy had an 80% chance of dying and the potentialfor things to go wrong was enormous,” said Nott.

10 “We only had one pint of blood, one scalpel and I wasn’tsure if the anaesthetic was strong enough.”

11 Despite the basic conditions, the operation was a successand the teenager made a full recovery.

12 More than 5 million people have been killed in Congosince the early 1990s, when the Rwandan conflict spreadinto what was then Zaire.

  Original article by Sam Jones, rewritten byJanet Hardy-Gould

Student tasksRead the article and answer these questions1 David Nott operated on .

  a a baby boy b a teenager c two teenage boys  2 The surgeon needed to operate on the boy’s

.  a hand b arm c shoulder  3 Nott’s colleague the instructions.

  a texted b texted and phoned c texted and emailed4 The boy only had a few to live.  a hours b days c weeks  5 It was the time that Nott had

done this operation.  a first b second c third  6 When Nott did the operation he had

medical products.  a a lot of  b a small number of c no

7 The boy is now .  a very ill b a bit better c much better

Read the article again with a dictionary and answerthese questionsa Which charity did Nott work for?

.   b Was this the first operation for the boy?

.  c Why did Nott decide to do the amputation?

.  d What medical products did Nott have?

.

Materials sheet

Dr Nott, centre, in the Democratic Republic of Congo AP

Article: Surgeon carries out

amputation by text

News-based English language activities from the global newspaper

January 2009