Embedded Files
listening focus
Lesson goals:
Lesson goals:
discover the history of barber shops,
watch and understand a difficult video about history,
chat about your experience with barbers and hairdressers,
explore a few commonly used academic English words and phrases.
At the barber's
At the barber's
Discuss these questions with your partner. Are your answers similar? Feel free to ask them some follow-up questions to find out more.
What would you say is the difference between a barber and a hairdresser?
Have you ever been to a barber shop? What was your experience like?
How often do you get your hair cut or styled by a professional?
Have you ever had a full beard? Would you like to?
What kind of men's facial hair styles are popular these days? A full beard? A moustache? A clean shave? A stubble? Side-burns?
Many barber shops feature a characteristic pole at the front door (pictured here). What is its significance?
The gory history of barber surgeons: watch the video
The gory history of barber surgeons: watch the video
As you watch the video, you will have to find the answers to the questions below. The answers will appear in order.
Before you watch, read through the questions and make sure you understand them okay. For each question, try to think of a possible answer. How confident are you in your guesses?
What were some of the services provided by barber shops in the Middle Ages?
How did barbers in the Middle Ages come to practise surgery?
How did astrology factor into the profession of a barber-surgeon?
Why were barber-surgeons particularly busy during the Little Ice Age?
What did barber-surgeons once use to cover the stumps of amputated limbs?
What painful battlefield practice did Ambroise Paré advocate against?
How did barbers and surgeons eventually split into two separate professions?
What do the colours of the barber pole symbolise?
Sorting through complex information when listening
Sorting through complex information when listening
The video you're watching uses advanced language and throws a lot of information at you fairly quickly. This can make it difficult to follow and make you feel overwhelmed. Here are some tips you can use to understand it better:
Predict what the video might say. This will make it much easier to understand, because you'll know, at least a little, what to expect. You can use the picture in the thumbnail, the title, the video description, or any comprehension questions your teacher has given you for this purpose.
Notice the visuals. The animations have been designed to help you follow along.
Watch the video the whole way through. Then, go back and watch it in shorter sections, stopping every time you think you've heard an answer to one of the questions. This will give your brain extra time to process what's just been said.
Try to understand without looking anything up in a dictionary. It's likely that a lot of the difficult words are not essential to understanding the overall meaning, or that their meaning can be inferred from context. Do not look anything up until after you've answered the comprehension questions on your own, or have watched the video at least twice. After that, you can go back and choose a couple new words that interest you, and look those up.
Compare what you've understood with someone else, or try explaining the video to another person. Putting what you've understood into words can help make it more clear, and show you which parts you need to rewatch for full comprehension.
Listen closely and fill in quotes
Listen closely and fill in quotes
Now that you understand the overall meaning of the video, play it again and focus on detail. Can you hear the words missing in the quotes below? Do you know what they mean, or are you able to guess from context?
Use the vocabulary to talk about yourself
Use the vocabulary to talk about yourself
Look at these sentences, which use some words and phrases from the video. Choose three sentences and tell your partner about an example from your own life. For instance:
Recently, I decided I'm going to start looking for a new job. There were two key factors that led me to this decision: I feel like I could be making better money, first of all, and also I've just grown bored doing the same thing day in and day out.
Given the price, I expected better service.
There were two key factors that led me to this decision.
I concentrated as best I could to commit this new information to memory.
She likes to keep busy even when she’s on holiday.
I believe this issue is primarily caused by ignorance.
This culture’s legacy can still be seen today.
commit
perform
cause
Vocabulary: delve deeper
Vocabulary: delve deeper
These words from our lesson have many uses. Can you think of different situations in which we can use them? See how many you can come up with. Then, choose one word to explore in more depth, and look it up in a dictionary. Take careful notes of the different meanings and contexts of use, then present them to the class.
Additional material
Additional material
Vocabulary check
Vocabulary check
Can you correctly fill in these sentences?
Do you remember the examples that your partners shared with you for any of these?
Teacher notes
Teacher notes
How to use this page
Share your screen with this page open and work through the tasks together with the student. This way, however, your student will not be able to use the interactive elements!
OR Share a link to this page with your student. You can each look at the page on your own screen as you work through the tasks. You could also ask your student to share their screen so you know for sure they're looking at the right thing. This way, you can take full advantage of the interactive tasks.
If you have another structure in mind for the lesson, you can copy the link to a particular task and share this with your student so they don't get lost looking for it. Simply click on the little link symbol next to the task title to copy the link to the section.
How to plan this lesson
I have laid out the tasks in a way which I have found makes sense. The instructions I have provided should make it easy to run this lesson with a group or a one-to-one student.
Feel free to change the order of the tasks or the instructions to suit your class! If you approach any of the tasks differently, or combine this lesson with other interesting resources, I'd love to hear about it. Leave your ideas in the feedback form at the bottom of this page.
The blue-green section with the little arrow (Sorting through complex information while listening) is hidden until you click on the arrow. This is to make it easier to cut it from the lesson if you don't want to discuss listening strategies in that lesson, or if you don't have time. You can also ask your students to explore this for homework.
Who this is for
This lesson is aimed at students at B2+ / C1 level. You can still run this lesson with B2 level students, but you may need to support them a little more with the vocabulary.
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