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Watch a recording of this talk by the British Council's LearnEnglish team at the World Teachers' Day web conference 2019.

What are young British people like these days? What are they into? What do they do at school and in their free time? Where do they live and which languages do they speak? What do they eat? What do they wear? To answer these questions from our students, we need to know about current British culture.

With literacy rates for young adults now higher than at any other time - 98 to 100 per cent in nearly all European countries and rapidly increasing in the developing world - it seems incongruous that there should be so much concern that teenagers are not reading as much as they used to. And yet, it’s still a major issue in education throughout the developed world. But the concern isn’t really about whether teens can read or not, but more about what they are reading and how much.

Shakespeare is without a doubt the most famous British poet and playwright that has ever lived. However, his work is often avoided by EFL teachers as they deem it too complex for their students.

Many English teachers would probably agree that teenagers are the most difficult age group to teach. Sometimes our teenage students do not want to be in class in the first place and often their minds can be on other things when we are giving an English lesson.

Using stories and poems for language learning provides an opportunity to introduce students to a whole culture. 

This is a series of extension activities to be used alongside our Shakespeare lesson plans for teens.