Last year we received books and magazines, among them one little magazine called American Lives a Brief Look. Since it is full of pictures dealing with activities that people do in the USA, we made use of them to talk about what is happening at the moment.
Apart from practicing Present Progressive, we dealt with American education, religion, sports and work opportunity.
Students worked in pairs and they chose three or four pictures from the magazine. After discussing for some minutes they would present their ideas to the group, telling what was happening. When we finished talking about the actions in progress, we compared Argentinian habits to American ones. This is always a kind of activity that students enjoy because they like getting to know more about American culture so as to see whether there are differences or not. When talking about differences, we paid special attention to the opening quotation “We may all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” – By Martin Luther King, Jr.
The activity developed two of our main points: language learning and cultural exchange.