Can you trust online reviews?
Lesson plan overview
This upper-intermediate to advanced lesson plan explores the topic of fake reviews. Students learn relevant vocabulary and idioms, practise listening by watching a short video and have various opportunities to speak and share their opinions and personal experiences about online shopping and reviews. You can combine it with the worksheets “Idioms: Black Friday (shopping)“, “Phrasal verbs: shopping“, as well as the video-based lesson plans “Black Friday” and “FOMO marketing“.
Speaking and vocabulary: The worksheet starts with an initial discussion about online reviews. Students share their opinions about the reliability of online reviews and which sites they use to read reviews. In the pre-listening vocabulary activity, students learn a few words and expressions (e.g. a red flag, get a leg up, stand out) by matching sentences with similar meanings. After that they practise the expressions by completing different questions and then have a conversation with a partner using the questions as prompts.
Listening: Students watch a video: “How to spot the fake reviews on Amazon” and take notes about 8 questions. After that, students share their opinions about the video.
Collocations: This worksheet concludes with an activity about collocations (e.g. pay attention, spot a fake review, play a role) which students complete and then say whether or not they agree with the statements.
Writing: Students will learn and practice how to write a short review of a product or service they have used. First, they are given a sample structure they can use to write their reviews. Next, they are given 2 reviews (1 positive and 1 negative) and are asked to underline all the adjectives used. After that they look at more adjectives and divide them into 2 categories (positive and negative).
Functional language: Students are given useful phrases they can use when writing a review (both for positive and for negative reviews).
Speaking and writing: Lastly, they are asked to talk about 3 products or services they’ve used recently and to use the phrases and adjectives learned. Finally, they write a review of 1 of the produces/services.
Homework: 3 research topics are suggested which aim to develop the topic further. The topics, combined with the additional resources provided on theenglishflows.com provide plenty of extra opportunities for contact with topic-related vocabulary in order to reinforce and enrich it.
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Pre-class activities
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In-class activities
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Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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