Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. The essays appear twice: first time, there is one per page. After that, they are
condensed onto 2 pages.
What I did with them:
1. T makes teams and gets team names. T reads one model essay, asking Ss to listen
carefully and write down important details (they can work together if necessary to
reconstruct a rough outline or skeleton). T then asks a couple questions. E.g. 1) What
was the first main point for similarities? 2) What additional information was provided
for the second difference? 3) Did the writer say the similarities or differences were
stronger?
First team to put hand up and answer correctly gets a point. Teams cannot answer
twice in a row without letting another team have a go, and the same team member
can't answer twice in a row.
2. Ask Ss to choose a captain (who will read), a copilot (who will watch and choose the
student who raises his hand the most quickly), a copilot (to read questions), and a
"judge" (to decide whether the answer is correct enough). Distribute a different
model essay to each group of Ss and ask them to write 2+ questions each. Then, let
the games begin.
3. Optional. Bonus question! T. (or the brightest student who would absolutely guess
correctly) reads out a bonus question worth more points so that anyone can win. T.
asks a difficult question about the passage. Best to have several questions ready in
case there is a tie (or, in case of tie, Ss write down their answers so there's no
cheating).
4. Extension: Ss write their own essay, perhaps after brainstorming some topics and
main points.
6 compare-contrast essays
T.J. and T.J.: a brother and sister
People often say that blood is thicker than water, and so we expect that family members will
have many things in common. Tom and his sister T.J. do share some similarities, but there are also
some striking differences between them: lets examine both of them.
One noteworthy similarity is their interest in motorcycle riding. Both Tom and T.J. had
motorcycles when they were kids and both still enjoy riding them now. An additional similarity is their
initials, T.J.E. Toms full name is Thomas John Everest and T.J.s is Terri Josephine Everest. Their
parents say neither this nor their birth date, the last similarity, was planned: both were born on
Friday the 13th, although Tom was born August 13th, 1972 and T.J. February 13, 1970.
Despite these commonalities, there are some noteworthy differences. For example, they live
in different countries: Tom lives in Canada and T.J. in the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, they
have different occupations the former is an engineer whilst the latter is a teacher. Finally, they
differ in marital status. The brother was married in Mexico in January 2003 whilst the sister is still
single.
In conclusion, Tom and T.J. are similar and different in many ways. However, family ties
notwithstanding, it would seem the differences nevertheless outweigh the resemblances.
Word count: 211