Money for nothing

The main goals of this ESL lesson plan are to:

• • – learn vocabulary about social politics and economics while discovering the idea of Universal Basic Income.
  • – develop their reading comprehension and language use with a range of activities – gap-fill, word replacement, passage adaptation and ‘wrong word’ match exercises.
  • – work on their listening comprehension with a short video called “Can Universal Basic Income Help Society?” They then answer questions about the film to test their understanding of meaning and details.

In this Upper-Intermediate ESL lesson, students investigate the concept of Universal Basic Income while improving their English language comprehension, vocabulary and structure. This lesson focuses on language related to social policy and economics, reading comprehension with passages about Universal Basic Income, and spoken interaction to enhance oral skills.

Warm-Up 

During the warm up, students examine a graph and respond to questions.

Video

Students follow a short a video called “Can universal basic income help society?” After viewing it, learners respond to questions to test their understanding of the video’s detail and meaning. 

Exercises

Learners participate in a range of language exercises to consolidate their comprehension of language and ideas related to Universal Basic Income. They begin with a sentence completion activity using words provided in a gap-fill exercise. In the next practice, they do a word replacement activity, substituting language in phrases with words from a specific list of new words. In the third exercise, students match words with antonyms to develop their range of language. In the final exercise, students adapt a short passage, replacing specific language with words from a list. 

Reading

During the reading comprehension, students read a brief passage about universal basic income. Then, they answer questions to check their comprehension of meaning and detail in the text. 

Discussion

During the final stage of the lesson, students answer questions to create a discussion about the lesson topic.