Heads or Tails
- Focus: Speaking, Grammar, Lexis, Task
- Level: Pre-intermediate+
- Age: Teen/Adult
- Target language: Holiday and money vocabulary, comparatives/superlatives
- Time: 45 minutes+
- Preparation: None
The idea for this activity came to me while watching a Ukrainian TV show. In short, two hosts would travel to the same location for a holiday, and after flipping a coin, one would be given a relatively modest sum of money ($100), while the other would have a credit card with no apparent limit. The two hosts would then both spend the same amount of time in this destination, but naturally they would have a very different holiday as they searched out the best options in their budget.
Procedure
1: Put students into groups. Tell the students to think about tourists who are visiting their city. Have them list possible answers to these questions:
- What should they see in their city?
- What should they do?
- What local food should they try?
- Where can they stay?
2: Once the previous stage is complete, mix the groups up so that they have a chance to share their ideas. Then inform the groups they need to plan a 4-day holiday for a group of tourists in their city. Half of the groups will have a modest budget, while the other groups will have a much higher budget.
Have students plan the trip.
You may wish to set some rules such as they may not sleep in the same place for the whole trip, or do nothing if they are trying to save money.
If students have access to the internet, allow them to look up any information they need such as the cost of excursions, hotels, restaurants, etc.
3: When students have their plans, get them to think about how best to present them to the class. If there are four students in a group, they might each talk about one day of the trip.
Depending on the amount of time you have for this task, you may wish to allow the students to prepare slides including pictures. This will be particularly relevant if students are talking about different destinations.
After the presentations, you could have a vote to decide which is best. If you have a large class with many groups, you could vote on a best budget and a best premium trip.
Follow on
Students could prepare some literature aimed at selling their trip such as a brochure or flyer. They could work on making a video.
This work could later be referenced in a course when dealing with complaints for example. Students could be given a scenario of an unhappy tourist who took one of the trips and was dissatisfied.
Variations
If students are quite travel-focused, or from different parts of the world, they need not be limited to the city where the class is taking place.
Alternatively, you could have students plan other events on a shoestring or with no expenses spared. For example:
- A perfect first date
- A wedding
- Starting a business
Example Rules
- Each day you will need to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
- You must have at least one day-time activity each day.
- You must have at least one night-time activity during the four day period.
- You cannot eat in the same place twice or stay in the same accommodation twice.
- You cannot do exactly the same activity twice. You can do two similar activities as long as they are in different locations.
- (For the budget groups) Your budget is £100 per day or £400 for all four days. If you spend less than £100 on one day, you may spend this on another day.
- (For the premium groups) Your budget is unlimited, but you should aim to spend as much money as you can.
Materials
If you would like to read more about the TV show I based this idea on, you can read about Oryol & Reshka on Wikipedia or IMDb.
Full activity pack – includes procedures, templates, language exercises (including answers) and useful language list.
