Wednesday 23 January 2013

Are you always on your phone?

You are going to
  • listen to someone talking about the advantages and disadvantages of technology and do a gap-fill 
  • practise essay planning
  • write an argument essay 


Note this post can be used in combination with  Could you live without it?







1) Discuss
  • Are you always on your phone?
  • How often do you use your phone?
  • What do you use it for?
  • What are the good things and bad things about smartphones?
  • Can you think of any situations when it would be inappropriate to use a phone?
  • Are we addicted to technology now?






2) Match
You are going to listen to someone talking about the advantages and disadvantages of technology.
Before you listen. Look at the exercise below. If you were writing an essay on this subject what would make the best order of sentences?








3) Listen
Alison Treharne is talking about technology on BBC Radio Devon.
According to her;
  • What are the good things?
  • What are the bad things?
  • Does she follow the structure above for talking about the topic?











4) Listen
Listen again and fill in the gaps.


Printable worksheet here






5) Write 
Use some of your own ideas and Alison's ideas to answer the question below.
Remember;
  1. Introduce the topic to be discussed.
  2. Explain the topic to be discussed
  3. Restate the question in you own words (what are you going to tell us about?)
  4. Give some advantages and disadvantages
  5. Support your ideas with some specific examples of advantages and disadvantages
  6. Give you conclusion (you can restate the question and give an an opinion)


"Nowadays the way many people interact with each other has changed because of technology. In what ways has technology affected the types of relationships that people make? Has this been a positive or negative development?"
(IELTS - 250 words) 







Read
Mobile phones are ruining relationships
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9714616/Mobile-phone-addiction-ruining-relationships.html





More
Now try these posts
  • Could you live without it? Mobile phones, Living without electricity, Advantages and disadvantages, IELTS, Intermediate, Linking words, Listening, Reading, Smartphones, Writing an argument, Contrasting, Technology


5 comments:

  1. Hi,

    great content and highly useful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your comment, tiziana!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This topic is highly relevant. A lot of aspects about communication technology to think about. Come to think of it, I've been using a mobile phone for half my life! Good post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for posting Fatimah.
      Yes, I think we use all this stuff now without thinking too much about it.

      David

      Delete
  4. Thankx alot for sharing such great material :)

    ReplyDelete