Australia: Uluru

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Australia mini-series, episode 153) is a short documentary about Uluru, the huge rock in the middle of Australia that seems to change colour during the day. It explains why the rock glows red at sunset (the iron on its surface has rusted), then tells how the Anangu, the Aboriginal people of the land, asked tourists not to climb their sacred path, how the land was given back to them on 26 October 1985, and how the climb closed for ever 34 years later, in 2019. The narration is mostly in the present simple, with the past simple for the history, a present perfect (has rusted) and a passive form (a chain was even put on the rock); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (Anangu, rusted, sacred).

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three photos (Uluru at sunset, climbers on the chain in 2017, the walk at the bottom of the rock), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Would you prefer to climb Uluru or to walk around it? Why?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read dates. The script explains its new words as it goes (the Anangu, rusted, sacred).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-travel-and-migration ("Voyages et migrations") and c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (3e). The episode targets CEFR level B1-.