Transport | Teaching English | British Council

Age range: 12 - adult
Theme: Transport
Lexical area: Travel and transport
Cross curricular links: Environmental studies

Instructions for language assistants in italics

Classroom materials

Introduction:
This lesson is about travel and transport. Some of the tasks consider the impact of travel on the environment so it would combine nicely with activities from the Essential UK lessons on Climate Change or Green Energy, both of which can be found in the General Interest section of the Essential UK archive.

Task 1 is a simple game of pictionary to introduce vocabulary, Task 2 is a ‘find somebody who..’ mingle task where students speak to one another about travel and transport. Task 3 is a reading task written by the British Council’s Trend UK team. It looks at some current issues concerning transport in the UK. Task 4 introduces the idea of the ‘Carbon Footprint’ to students and Task 5 offers two role play scenarios which are quite typical of rail and air travel in Britain today. Finally Task 6 is a creative activity where students can design a vehicle for the future.

1. Transport pictionary
Have a game of pictionary with your students to introduce transport vocabulary. Divide the class into two teams. Divide the board into two and ask one ‘artist’ from each team to come up to the board to draw. Write a word for each team on a piece of paper and show the corresponding artists their word to draw. Then have a race for the teams to guess their artist’s word first. The artists aren’t allowed to speak or mime while they draw. Award points accordingly.

If you have a large class divide the class into teams of six or so and give each group a piece of paper. In this case, all teams can be drawing the same word at the same time and the first team to guess it (they could come up and write it on the board to make it easy to decide on the winners) wins a point.

Words to be covered may include: ship, car, bike, motorbike, train, tram, underground, aeroplane, helicopter, ferry, tuk-tuks (depending on where you are teaching you may have to help with this one!) wheels, bus, coach, 4 x 4, pedestrian, skateboard, roller skates, scooter etc.

Task 1 Transport pictionary
Listen to your teacher to play a game. Write any new vocabulary here:

2. Travel – find somebody who…
Adapt the task to the level of your students if this one isn’t appropriate. Think of new questions and get students to copy your version from the board. Check your students know how to form the questions and if necessary write the questions on the board to support the weaker students. 'Did you walk to school today?’ ‘Have you ever travelled by helicopter?’ etc.

When you are confident that students understand the questions ask them to write two more statements in the blank spaces. Give examples of possible follow-up questions in order to get some extra information. Then students can all stand up and ask one another the questions. Make sure they don’t repeat names – this forces them to speak to all their classmates. When the task is finished, ask several students for a summary of what they discovered.

Task 2 Travel – find somebody who…

Find somebody who...	Name	Extra information
walked to school today.
has travelled by helicopter.
can tell you a funny travel story.
rides a bike regularly.
thinks people travel too much these days.
...
...

3. Planes, trains and… tuk-tuks
This is an article written by the British Council’s Trend UK team about transport in the UK. Depending on the level of your class, pre-teach the vocabulary you think students will struggle with. Make sure you explain the word ‘to commute’ which in some languages there isn’t a direct translation.

Answers - 1: Commuting options 2: International commuting 3: A lifestyle thing 4: The greener option 5: Staying at home

Task 3 Planes, trains and… tuk-tuks
Read the text about transport in the UK and put the paragraph headings in the correct places. Then discuss the questions below.

International commuting
Commuting options
A lifestyle thing
Staying at home
The greener option

Planes, trains and… tuk-tuks

With conventional modes of transport becoming less appealing, commuters are finding alternative methods of getting to work.

1) Roads in the UK are becoming increasingly crowded which means more traffic jams and longer journeys for those who travel to work by car. Public transport is seen to be expensive and unreliable, and is often not available, particularly to people living in rural areas. Although more people cycle to work now, many think cycling is dangerous on our busy roads.

2) That’s why some people are prepared to take drastic action to avoid the nightmare of conventional commuting. Cheap flights have enabled people to commute from places as far-flung as Barcelona, Marrakech and even Tallinn. A recent report (Future Forum) suggests that by 2016, 1.5 million people will be working in the UK but living overseas.

3) Flexible working hours and advances in technology have also helped to make this possible. Ellie Portland,24, who works for a television production company in London, uses budget airlines to commute to work from her home in Barcelona. It is not feasible to commute daily, so she travels to the UK once a week and stays for a few days with friends or family in London. And for the rest of the week she is able to work from her ‘virtual office’ at home in Spain. There are added benefits, as Ellie explains, ‘I have a better quality of life in Barcelona and rent, food and clothes are much cheaper.’

4) Not everyone, however, thinks this is a sustainable alternative. John,26, from Lincoln thinks it’s ‘irresponsible… and selfish. The sky will become more like the M25… what a disaster for the environment!’ Another more environmentally friendly option is Eurostar. High-speed train routes between the UK, France and Belgium are due to be opened next year which would mean travelling between London and Lille, for example, will take just 80 minutes.

5) For those who prefer to continue to live in the UK, another form of public transport is being tested in Brighton with plans to extend to other cities next year. Twelve tuk-tuks, three-wheeled vehicles prevalent in Asia, have been imported to the UK from India. Adapted for the British climate – with hoods and curtains to keep out the rain – they are environmentally friendly and ideal for getting around towns and cities. Now that sounds like a fun way to get to work!

Connie, October 2006 (British Council’s Trend UK team)

Glossary
M25 - Motorway circling London
Eurostar - Train service between the UK and Europe via the Channel Tunnel

Are the transport problems in the UK similar to those in your country?
What do you think about living in one country and working in another? Do you think it’s environmentally irresponsible?
Do you think cycling in a city centre is dangerous?
What other transport solutions can you think of for big cities?

4. Carbon Footprints
Depending on where you are teaching the idea of ‘Carbon Footprints’ and offsetting your carbon emissions may be a completely new concept. The idea is that if you use lots of planes or use a car a lot or generate greenhouse gasses by other actions you can ‘offset’ the damage you do by paying an organisation to plant trees on your behalf which will absorb the gasses you produced. You can find lots of ‘Carbon Calculators’ on-line which will tell you how much your ‘carbon footprint’ is and what you can do to readdress the balance.

With your students, draw a footprint on the board and then draw a plane, a car, a factory around it and ask students what they think the images represent. Explain the idea of the Carbon Footprint.

Then ask students to think of five questions to ask their classmates in order to find out who in the class has the biggest carbon footprint. If you have access to a computer, show your students an on-line calculator to give them some ideas.

You could also tell your students that some pop groups are making an effort to offset their carbon footprint from going on world tours.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com - an article about the how the group Pearl Jam off sets their carbon footprint from touring the world.
http://www.conservation.org/xp/news
http://www.commondreams.org

Possible questions are:

How many flights do you do a year?
How many TVs do you have in your house?
Do you drive in a car a lot? etc.

Task 4 Carbon Footprints
Have you ever heard of ‘Carbon Footprints’? Your teacher is going to tell you about Carbon Footprints then you are going to write five questions to ask your classmates to try and decide who is leaving the biggest carbon footprint on the planet.

Write your questions here:

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Conclusion: I think the students in the class with the biggest carbon footprints are:

5. Travel Trauma – role play
Ask students if they’ve ever had problems when they were travelling. What can go wrong? When you have discussed this, put students into pairs to prepare the role plays. Make sure you give time for students to think about what they want to say, and to ask you for any language they may need. When they are ready, ask a few volunteers to do their role play for the whole class. If these scenarios aren’t appropriate for your class, think of a couple more or ask your students to think of similar scenarios that are typical of their country.

Task 5 Travel Trauma – role play

1. At the airport

At the airport

A – You work in the check-in at Heathrow airport. Today all the flights are cancelled because of all the pilots are on strike. You have to explain to the passengers that there will be no flights for at least three days.

At the airport

B – You reserved your flight 6 months ago to travel to Australia for your best friend’s wedding (or a similar event). You arrive at the airport early and go to the check in. You are very excited and you only have two weeks off work so you plan to arrive just the day before the wedding then you will travel around Australia.

2. At the train station

At the train station

A – You work for British Rail. You arrived at work this morning and your boss told you that all trains are cancelled today because of important engineering work on the tracks. You have to tell the passengers the news!

At the train station

B – You arrive at Paddington train station in the centre of London. You have paid a lot of money for a ticket to Edinburgh where you have a friend waiting for you. Your friend doesn’t have a telephone or a mobile and will be waiting for you at the station.

6. Transport of the future
Ask your students to imagine the world in the year 2070. How will life be different? Ask some general questions and then ask students about how they think travel will change in the future. If you can get some pictures of spacecrafts or futuristic cars, that would help to give students some ideas. Then put students into groups to design a vehicle of the future. (I heard on the news last week that in Valencia, Spain, they are trying to design a car that runs on orange peel – that may give them some ideas for some new fuels).

Task 6 Transport of the future
Work in groups to design a form of transport for the future. It must be environmentally friendly. Draw the vehicle here and be prepared to explain it to the other groups.

Internet links

Articles related to travel and the environment:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/travel

British Council’s two-year climate change campaign:
http://www.britishcouncil.org/zerocarboncity.htm

Story about the introduction of tuk-tuks in the UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2

Call for greener transport policies:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource -

BY JO BUDDEN

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