What happens to your brain when you have a concussion

This ESL worksheet explores the topic of concussions and other sports injuries. It is useful for students who are interested in sport as well as health-care professionals. Students learn vocabulary to talk about different injuries and the symptoms of a concussion, watch a video and talk about the topic.

Vocabulary: After an initial discussion, students learn vocabulary to describe different injuries (runner’s knee, sprained ankle, tennis elbow, pulled muscle). Then they talk about common injuries in different sports and the recovery time for each one. In the next vocabulary activity, students learn the typical symptoms of a concussion (memory loss, sensitivity to light and noise, feeling down, nausea, dizziness). In the pre-listening activity students learn more expressions relevant to the topic (pass out, land on your head, black out, a blow). They practise the expressions with a few “have you ever…” questions.

Listening: students watch a video “What it’s like to get a concussion?”, which is divided into 3 parts and complete 3 different activities. The first one is a gap-fill exercise. In the second one students need to answer a few questions with their own words. In the last one students match different speakers to the information given.

Role-play: this worksheet concludes with a role-play activity between a patient and a doctor.

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