The Oversharing Epidemic

The main goals of this ESL lesson plan are to:

• – explore the phenomenon of oversharing through multiple engaging activities examining psychological, professional, and social implications;
• – develop sophisticated vocabulary, critical thinking skills, speaking abilities, and structured conversation techniques;
• – watch a video about the dangers of oversharing and practice ranking, discussion, and reading comprehension skills.

In this Proficiency speaking practice lesson, students explore the phenomenon of oversharing through multiple engaging activities. Students develop sophisticated vocabulary and critical thinking skills while examining the psychological, professional, and social implications of sharing personal information.

Warm-up

The lesson kicks off with students pondering a few examples of sharing personal information and discussing whether they would do it.

Video

Students watch a video “The Dangers of Oversharing.” After viewing, they discuss the main messages from the video using phrases provided.

Speaking

In the first exercise, students discuss a number of opposing views on sharing personal information. Next, they use structured conversation prompts to explore key aspects of oversharing. In the following exercise, students choose a quote that resonates with them and explain why they chose it. Finally, they rank ten key factors from 1 (most likely to lead to oversharing) to 10 (least likely to lead to oversharing) and explain their top three choices.

Reading

Next, students dive into a short article “Workers are filming their layoffs, then posting them to TikTok. What could go wrong?” and fill in missing words in a text based on the article.

Discussion

To wrap up the lesson, students use words from a word cloud to discuss the dangers of oversharing.