HARMONY PRINGLE

 

LEVEL: 3/4 year of ESO

RESTAURANT REVIEWS: A READING (AND WRITING) ACTIVITY

I often find that textbooks try to get students to read/write reviews that are 3 or 4 paragraphs long, something they surely don't see in the real world. Let's be real: they don't read the newspaper. I'd rather them gain skills they can apply directly, even if it means shorter reading and writing samples.

Here's an activity using real reviews from TripAdvisor. The texts (one positive, one negative just to spice things up) can be found in the link. PRE-TEACH: Pre-teach the word "review" using a photo, a screenshot or just a drawing of 3/5 stars. Remind students it can be positive or negative and that the purpose is to describe and recommend. THINK/PAIR/SHARE: Do you ever use reviews when choosing something? Have you ever written a review (amazon, videogame sites, a restaurant, etc.)? READ: Read the two restaurant reviews. ACTIVITY: Read the two reviews again and then answer the following questions in your notebook. Content: Fill in the information from the two reviews. (You may not be able to fill in every section.) *You may need to define "service" in this context.

Restaurant: Place: Food: Service*: Recommendation: Language:

1. Identify the titles in the two reviews. 2. Write down all the adjectives you can find in the two reviews. 3. Write down all the adverbs you can find in the two reviews. 4. Find an example of a contraction (two words joined by an apostrophe). 5. Find an example of a sentence fragment (a sentence without a conjugated verb). *DIFFERENCIATION*

LOW: Make sure you go through each step with the students: pre-teaching, TPS, reading, and the activity. You can answer questions/define words along the way. You could also do the content/language question for the first review together and then have students answer the questions for the second review in pairs.

HIGH: Higher level students should be able to do most of this activity independently. You could challenge them by having them work with a lower level student, appoint them the "Vocabulary Master" of the activity as Shawn mentioned, or get them to write their own review in the same style for homework.