My City – ESL Lesson Plan For TEFL Teachers
Giving YOU the chance to SPEAK about where you live!
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About This Lesson
This lesson fits perfectly after you’ve covered travel, countries and tourism. It was originally used with an upper-intermediate multinational class, but you can easily adapt it for strong B1-level groups.
Students will talk about their home town, discuss what makes a place great to visit, watch a travel video about Stockholm, and learn useful vocabulary for describing cities, towns and villages.
Lesson Procedure
1. Warmer – One word about your hometown
Ask students to think of one word they associate with their hometown. Go around the class and get each student to share their word. Pause on interesting answers and ask follow-up questions.
Repeat with a second question: Which town/city/village in your country would you recommend to visitors?
2. Ranking task – What matters when visiting a place?
Hand out a list of factors and ask students to rank them from most to least important:
- Fresh air
- Public transport
- Entertainment
- History
- Climate
- Shops & shopping
- Size
- Price
- Location
- Bars & restaurants
- Public places (parks, squares, beaches)
Students explain their choices in pairs or small groups. Monitor and help with vocabulary.
3. Stockholm photo prediction
Show students a picture of Stockholm and ask:
- Can you guess which city it is?
- Has anyone been there? What was it like?
- If not, what do you think the city might be like?
Picture: View image
4. Listening – Travel video about Stockholm
Divide the class into two groups: left and right.
- The left group listens for numbers on the left-hand side of the worksheet.
- The right group listens for the numbers on the right-hand side.
After watching, groups compare answers and help each other. Play again and pause if needed for support.
Video link: Watch the video
Follow-up questions:
- Would you like to go there?
- Which sight is most interesting to you?
- Is Stockholm similar to your city in any way?
5. Vocabulary – Describing places
Ask students if they remember any descriptive phrases from the video: cosmopolitan, an array of cafés, narrow streets, Nordic feel.
Give each student one PART 1 sentence and one PART 2 sentence. They must walk around the room and find their matching halves to complete meaningful sentences.
Encourage them to focus on context rather than using dictionaries.
6. Clarifying and testing vocabulary
When all sentences are matched, students read their full sentence aloud. Clarify any bold vocabulary.
Then test understanding by giving synonyms or short scenarios for students to guess the correct word. You can also remove one half of each sentence and have students recreate the complete version.
7. Speaking – Describe your city
Put students into groups. They complete personalised questions using the vocabulary learned in the previous stage.
Finish with open-class feedback, highlighting interesting answers and encouraging students to compare their cities.
Enjoy the lesson!
Luke – Native Speaker Online