On Broadway: Break a leg!

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Broadway mini-series, episode 111) is a one-minute documentary about the theatre expression "Break a leg!", told with real photos and drawings. A single narrator explains that many actors think "Good luck!" brings bad luck, looks closer at the words and shows that in a theatre the expression means good luck, though nobody knows exactly where it comes from. Learners meet the present simple for habits (they say, it means, actors think), its negative (don't say), questions with do (What do they say?) and a closing question about their own life. The vocabulary is about the theatre, the body (leg) and countries (Britain, America). Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 8 on facts and 2 on vocabulary (Break a leg!, opposite).

Materials & prerequisites

You need the episode (audio and slideshow) and the printables: a one-page pupil pack and teacher pack (the text, three pictures, the key words and the 10 questions, with the answers highlighted in the teacher pack), a pupil question sheet and a teacher answer key. There is no lesson plan. Learners should know the present simple with they and the expression Good luck!. Break a leg names the subject, so it is taught for understanding; opposite is explained in the episode.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged art-and-expression-of-feelings (6e, "Arts et expression des sentiments", study topic "Welcome to Broadway", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.