Almost halfway through season 1, in episode 11 Monica and Phoebe meet a handsome stranger and want to get to know him at any cost. That obviously doesn’t end well!
This week we’re looking at the very controversial issue of futurity in English, more specifically here at will and going to to make predictions. Lots of grammar bits in the teacher’s notes.
Here’s the worksheet and teacher’s notes: Friends – 006 – Grammar – Making predictions
Enjoy! 🙂
The activity this week was a contribution to the blog by Natália Guerreiro. Thanks, Natália! 🙂
In the seventh episode of season one, the friends experience a major blackout — which has, at least in the parts we’ll be watching, the merciful consequence we don’t have to hear Phoebe sing! What the friends were doing at the time the lights went out and what they did while the lights were out is what students will find out in this great activity!
Part 1: Past Continuous
Part 2: Past Simple
Friends – 005 – Past Simple and Past Continuous
Thanks again, Natália! 🙂
Enjoy!
In the 7th episode of the first season of Friends, Chandler’s colleague Shelly makes him a… weird proposal! By exploring this one-minute passage with students, we can get them talking about making a faux pas and, at the same time, discuss the different intonation patterns for questions in English.
What would you do if a 500-dollar deposit was made by mistake in your account? Would you keep it? And what would you do if you were omnipotent for a day? Would you wish for three more wishes?
These are some of the questions our friends ask themselves and each other in episodes 3 and 4 of the first season, and the two video segments and activity below might help you clarify and practice Second Conditional with your learners.
In the second episode of the first season, the friends have a very funny conversation about the differences between men and women when it comes to relationships and, more specifically, sex.
The topic can be a bit taboo, so I tried to approach it in the least… sexual way. In the teachers’ notes, however, there are some very simple ideas on how to focus more directly on the sexual metaphors used and on metaphorical use of language in general. Regardless of how you use the activity, however, I’m sure this will generate a lot of discussion.
Friends – 002 – Men are from Mars Women are from Venus – s01e02
In the first episode of the first season, Chandler tells his friends about a very weird dream he had about his mom! Instead of using the Simple Past, however, he uses mostly Simple Present, in a use that’s sometimes referred to as Historical Present.
Martins Hewings, in the third edition of his Advanced Grammar in Use, has this to say about this use of the Simple Present:
We often use the present simple and present continuous in stories and jokes in informal spoken English to create the impression that events are happening now. This can make them more direct and exciting and hold people’s attention:
‘She goes up to this man and looks straight into his eyes. He’s not wearing his glasses, and he doesn’t recognise her…’
(p.4)
Below you’ll find both the video segment and an activity to help you explore this point with your students.
Friends – 001 – Historical Present – s01e01
Your comments and feedback are highly appreciated!
This is not the first time I’ve tried to watch all the Friends episodes in order and create activities for the ELT classroom with them! Having been a Friends fan forever, I started a blog with this purpose a few years back (www.friendsintheclassroom.blogspot.com) but unfortunately didn’t go through with it.
Time to try again! 🙂
I could start from season 2 – which is where I stopped last time around – but won’t; I’ll start from scratch. The reason why I’ll do so is that I was a different teacher back then, less experienced, and tended to focus solely on grammar structures. This time around I’ll have a much more… holistic focus, as it were, and I hope to be able to devise activities for lead-ins, warm-ups, to work on phonology, vocabulary, discourse, listening, speaking, writing (!), reading (!!) and also, of course, grammar. I’ll revamp and possibly re-post the activities I created back then, but this is supposed to really be a fresh start.
Finally, I’ll be counting on a little help from my friends, and if there is a Friends-related activity you’ve created over the past decades (yes, going on two now!) and you feel like sharing them with the world, please send them to me and I’ll post them here, crediting you always.
Season 1, episode 1 now on. 235 to go after this one.
Friends in the classroom! 