The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

In this Advanced ESL lesson, we will look into clichés, idioms and proverbs. The student will also practice using intensifiers and mitigators.

Warm-up

The lesson starts with a speaking exercise. The student pretends they’re a weather presenter and talks about the weather forecast based on the pictures.

Following this, they fix the mistakes in some weather idioms (e.g. It’s raining cats and dogs, head in the clouds, etc.).

Proverbs

The student learns what proverbs are and then links the scattered words in order to make some common English proverbs (e.g. Love is blind).

Video: Who was Confucius?

Having learned what proverbs are, the student watches a short video about a famous Chinese philosopher Confucius and learns some of his well-known proverbs. Then, they answer the video comprehension questions and correct the mistakes in proverbs. New vocabulary is extracted from the video for the student to match it with the explanations (e.g. benevolence, integrity, contrary, etc.).

Video: Phyllis’ clichés on a rainy day

As an introduction to clichés, the student watches an excerpt from The Office paying attention to clichés we use on a rainy day.

Clichés are then explained and exemplified in a short paragraph. The cliché examples are extracted and matched with their meanings. The student practices using these clichés by fixing the mistakes in some of them.

Idioms

Idioms are explained and revised. In a fun exercise, the student is to guess the idioms presented through emojis.

To sum up the segment about fixed expressions, the student reads a few sayings and decides whether they are real or fake.

Mitigators and intensifiers

Mitigators and intensifiers are separately explained and exemplified. The student then sorts out adverbs from the box as intensifiers or mitigators.

In the final exercise, the student solves rebus puzzles which depict some common English sayings.