At the station

Objective & content

A two-page pack for one everyday situation: getting help at a train station when the train is cancelled. Pupils learn the words (platform, ticket office, departures board, bus stop, café, ticket) and the phrases to ask about a train (Is it late? Which platform is it? When does it leave?) and understand the answers (It's cancelled. There's a bus instead.). Then they hear the same language in a real conversation, the Listen Up! episode "At the station", and use it themselves in a role-play. By the end, they can find out what to do when a train is late or cancelled, and where to go next.

Pedagogical guide

Page 1 is the language of the situation. Pupils talk about a picture of a busy station hall, write six words under new drawings (the first is done), read a box of useful phrases (what you say or ask, and what you hear), and match five questions to their answers. Page 2 puts the language to work. Pupils complete a short dialogue with words from a box (Maya at Leeds station, whose train to Oxford is cancelled), then listen to the episode: Zara and her grandma's train to Brighton is cancelled on the morning of a family wedding. A QR code on the sheet plays the recording on a phone or a tablet, with no app and no login. Pupils tick true or false, listen again for four short answers, then do a role-play with A and B cards: a traveller asks a station worker about a cancelled train and the bus instead. Card B holds the information card A needs, so pupils have to ask. Every task opens with an example. Page 1 and the dialogue use other names, places and prices, so they never give away a listening answer. Page 3 is the answer key with the teacher notes.

Suggested procedure

1. (5 min) Pupils look at the picture on page 1 and say where the people are and what they are doing.
2. (5 min) Pupils write the words under the pictures; check together.
3. (5 min) Pupils read the useful phrases aloud in pairs, one asking and one answering.
4. (5 min) Pupils match the questions to the answers.
5. (5 min) Page 2: pupils complete the dialogue with the words in the box.
6. (10 min) Play the episode once for true or false, then again for the short answers.
7. (10 min) Role-play in pairs with card A and card B, then pupils swap cards.
8. (5 min) Check the answers with page 3.

Adaptations

[S] Pupils read the useful phrases aloud in pairs before the role-play, and keep page 1 in front of them while they play it. [A] Pupils invent their own problem in the same place and act it out without the cards.

Materials & prerequisites

One copy of pages 1 and 2 per pupil; cut out the role cards on page 2. Page 3 is the answer key: keep it. To play the episode, pupils scan the QR code with a phone or a tablet, or you play it to the class from the app (Listen Up!, "At the station"). Pupils need telling the time, the present simple for timetables, and can and should.