My English Pages

Advice

This activity teaches students expressions of advice (asking for and giving advice.) The materials needed are sheets of paper and pens or pencils. The activity takes about 50 minutes.

The activity

• Teach students expressions of advice.
  • Asking for advice:
    What do you suggest?
    What do you advise me to do?
    What should I do?
    What ought I to do?
    If you were me what would you do?
  • Giving advice:
    If I were you, I would…
    Why don’t you…?
    You’d better…
    You ought to/should…
    If you take my advice, you…
• Give students a set of problems to discuss:
  • A bad headache
  • You need to give up smoking. You can’t figure out how.
  • A problem with a school subject.
  • Your PC broke and you need money to buy a new one.
  • You can’t sleep at night.
• Learners discuss and suggest solutions to these problems.
• Students write down a short exchange using expressions of advice.
  • A: Asks for advice.
  • B: Gives advice.
• Tell students that now they have to write down  problems they are facing in their lives. Problems with
  • parents,
  • school,
  • health,
  • friend,…
• Each student writes a short note to a classmate stating his problem and asking for advice.
• Each student write a response to his classmate suggesting an advice.

Variation

This activity may work pretty well using technology. You may encourage learners, for example, to use mobile short messages, twitter or emails to practice expressions of advice.

More on:

• Asking for and giving advice