Overpopulation

This upper-intermediate lesson plan deals with the topic of overpopulation. Students will learn demographic terms, will practice describing demographic trends, and will discuss the issue of overpopulation, and the demographic situation in their country at length. You can combine it with other video-based lessons, such as “The happiest countries in the world”, “Brain drain”, “Climate refugees”, and “Seasonality in business” (for describing graphs), as well as the worksheet “Phrasal verbs: trends and graphs“.

The lesson starts with 2 speaking activities. First, students look at a list of global issues the world is facing today and discuss which ones they are most worried about, as well as the relationship between the different issues. Next, students are given a photo of a megacity, and discuss different questions about megacities.

Vocabulary: Students learn demographic terms such as life expectancy, birth rate, fertility rate, death rate,  literacy rate, population growth population policy, and family planning by combining words from 2 different groups to create the expressions. To activate the target vocabulary, they talk about the demographic situation in their country, answering 7 questions given. 

Next, students talk about overpopulation. They discuss different questions and negative consequences. They are also given useful language to talk about negative consequences. (These expressions are introduced in more detail in the lesson plan “Heatwaves”).

Listening: Students watch a video called “Did you know: overpopulation” and answer 6 questions. After that, they engage in a post-listening discussion.

Vocabulary: Describing trends, graphs, and charts. Students learn useful verbs to describe trends. They look at example sentences about different trends (upward, downward, stable, and fluctuating), and complete some of the sentences with the correct verbs (e.g rise, surge, soar, spike, plummet, drop, plunge, hold steady, flatten out, level, off, fluctuate, oscillate). Then, students look at 3 graphs, and describe them, using the vocabulary from this lesson. They are also given a link to a web page to look at more charts and describe more things. 

Finally, students are asked to research a country of their choosing and present their findings to the class.

As usual, to review the target vocabulary from this lesson and to do some more speaking practice, you can use the printable conversation cards.