Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Materials:
Text A
Text B
Handout 1
Handout 2
Instructions
Divide your class into two groups: A and B – tell them they are going to
read a story about a foreigner’s trip to the Czech Republic - give each
student a copy of text A or B depending on which group they are in
and ask them to read through quickly to see whether he had a good
time or not. Next put the class into pairs (one student with A text
and one student with B text). Ask them to find as many differences
between the two texts as possible (you can tell them that there are
30 differences to find). Then ask them why there are differences
between text A and text B (answer A is written in American English
and B is written in British English). Distribute Handout 1 to each
student and get them to complete it in pairs. Reinforce the
differences during the feedback stage. Finally distribute Handout 2
to each student and get them to complete the text in either American
or British English.
Text A
Handout 1
It happened when I was on _______1 in the Czech Republic, I was
_______2 down the _______3 when the _______4 stopped me and
asked for my driving _______5. They noticed that my _______6 had
a crack in it and I needed new ______7. Luckily I was only a few
hundred ______8 from an old ________9 town, so I drove to the
______10 and looked for a _______11, I didn’t find one but I managed
to park my car in a small space near a hotel, it was a _______12
________13 but I did it without hitting the _______14. Then I took
my luggage out of the _______15 and booked into the hotel. The room
was really big, almost the size of a small ________16 but it was on the
5th floor and there wasn’t an _______17. There was an
______18Television in the corner and I turned it on to see if there
were any English ________ 19, but there were only Czech channels, so
I sat down on the bed, got into my _______20 and tried to relax, but
the people in the next room were having an _______21 and it was so
loud that I couldn’t. Eventually I had to listen to some of my
_______22 music on my portable mp3 player to get to sleep. The next
day I went to the ______23 station and asked the mechanic to pick up
my car and fix it, I gave him the keys and told him the ______24 plate
and then went back to the hotel. It took three days to fix the car,
and although the town was beautiful there wasn’t much to see and it
rained every day, so I spent most of my time listening to the couple
_______25 next door, they had a baby but no ______26 and the hall
smelt of dirty ________27 , they had no baby ______28 to take the
baby out, so with the crying and the ______29 you can imagine how
happy I was to pay the ______30 and go home!
Handout 2