This turned out to be a great topic for an upper-intermediate adult class 🙂 : Men vs women stereotypical behaviour when arguing.
Outline of the lesson:
Lead in
- Describe a scenario to the Ss where a couple (man and a woman) are having an argument, for example at a restaurant, at a bus stop, in the supermarket, etc.
- Ask Ss to discuss in pairs: Stereotypically, how are they behaving differently?
- Open class feedback
Vocabulary
- Provide your students with a vocabulary list on behavioural tendencies which they must categorise in a Venn diagram, whether it is more likely of a man, a woman or both. Â Examples : withdraw, beat around the bush, be straightforward, cry, raise the tone of voice, be sarcastic, roll your eyes, etc.
- Work on the vocabulary with the Ss – meaning and pronunciation – and have them work in small groups to contrast their opinions. This is more interesting if you can mix men and women within the same group.
- Open class feedback
Video
- Ss will watch the following video : Weird things all couples fight about.
- Before they do so, ask them to predict what they arguments will be about. Let them know they are everyday minor arguments a couple would have.
- Play the video. Ss check for their predictions.
- If want and have time, play it twice, the second time with the captions so that they can focus on language for further work on colloquial speech.
Role play
- Ideally, pair up male and female students and ask them to switch roles for the task. (The man should play the woman and viceversa)
- Give them time to prepare a 30 second role play of an argument similar to the ones in the video. Ask them to try and include as much stereotypical behaviour as possible.
- Each pair will perform in front of the whole class. After each performance, the audience must:
(a) Describe what the argument was about
(b) Point out any stereotypical behaviour
(c) Rate the performance from 1-10 based on: creativity and humour, language use and dramatisation skills.