Trees Don’t Grow to the Sky

In this C2 ESL lesson, students explore excess, unsustainable growth, and boom-and-bust cycles while learning vocabulary for speculation and economic downturns and practicing inversion for emphasis.

Warm-up:

Students answer a few questions about the saying “Trees don’t grow to the sky.” Next, they guess which facts about famous bubbles and crashes are true. Then, they match different types of investors with their descriptions.

Video:

Before watching, students match key economic terms with their definitions. They then watch a video titled “Bridgewater’s Prince Sees US in 70s-Era Boom-Bust Cycle.” After watching the video, they answer a few questions and discuss the issues it raises.

Vocabulary:

Students complete sentences with idioms and phrasal verbs. They then choose the correct words to complete collocations and find the odd one out in a set of verb collocations. After that, they guess the ending of a famous economic law. Finally, they put a conversation about a hot stock in the correct order.

Grammar:

Students learn how inversion is used for emphasis. The lesson covers inversion after negative and time adverbials such as never, rarely, little, no sooner, and not until. It also covers inversion with only, in conditionals, and with so, such, and not only.

Exercises:

The learners decide whether sentences describe facts or hypothetical situations, choose the correct options, and correct mistakes. They then complete sentences with the correct form of the words in brackets and transform sentences using key words. Next, they rewrite sentences using inversion. In the last section, they react to a number of situations using emphatic language.

Reading:

Learners read a text about Japan’s bubble economy. Afterward, they answer questions about the text and decide whether a set of statements is true or false.

Discussion:

Students discuss whether an economy can keep growing forever on a planet with limited resources. Finally, they talk about recessions, bailouts, possible bubbles today, and how they would react to easy money from an investment they didn’t understand.