Motivational quotes from famous people and an upbeat Imagine Dragons song to inspire students to discuss their own motivation and how they can achieve their goals. Includes a couple of Cambridge Exam style gap fill activities, phrasal verbs and a chance to practise reported speech.
Warmer
Dictate this for students to note down:
Be bananas
Look out for the banana
This is the banana of our lives
and we're going to banana
Whatever it bananas!
Explain that there may be some inaccuracies in the speech. Play the captain America clip 0.30-0.44. Students listen and change incorrect words.
(careful / each other / the fight / to win / takes)
Students discuss these questions in pairs:
Do you think of yourself as highly motivated?
Think of some famous examples of people who faced a huge challenge and were willing to do “whatever it takes”
Famous High-Achievers
Show Slides 2 and 3 of the PowerPoint above. Each time you click it will progressively reveal more information about a famous person. In pairs students have to guess who it is.
You could gamify it:
The first pair to answer correctly gets a point.
Each pair is only allowed to give one answer.
(if you have one or two students who tend to dominate this kind of activity, get the class to write on mini whiteboards and show their answers at the end).
Phrasal Verbs
The biographies include a number of useful phrasal verbs (highlighted) Slide 4 has a gap fill exercise to review them and recap the main points of each person.
Motivational Quotes
Once you have introduced the famous figures, give each group a set of the 10 motivational quotes and ask them to predict who each one is by. Display Slide 5 while they do this. Then use Slides 6 and 7 to reveal the answers.
Reported speech
Ask students to tell you what each person said using reported speech and write down 3 quotes they like in reported structure.
Slides 8 and 9 show some of the quotes with the words which need to change highlighted in red.
Song
Lyric gap-fill activities for intermediate, Upper-intermediate and Advanced are all in this document: Whatever it takes - imagine dragons.docx
Verse 1
Give students the gap-fill for the first verse, either on paper or by displaying it on the board. It's designed as a part 2 Use of English exercise, so students should be able to predict the words before listening.
Here are verse 1 lyrics with the potential grammar gaps (depending on difficulty).
Falling too fast to prepare for this Tripping in the world could be dangerous Everybody circling, it's vulturous, negative, nepotist
Everybody waiting for the fall of man Everybody praying for the end of times Everybody hoping they could be the one I was born to run, I was born for this
When students have had time to guess the missing words, play 0.00 - 0.28 to check.
Pre-Chorus
Next, give students the "pre-chorus" table with picture clues (see image) and allow them a minute to speculate about possible answers then play 0.28 - 0.41.
Chorus
Finally, display the chorus and ask students to guess what words might go in the spaces. Then play 0.41-1.11.
Whatever it _____
'Cause I love the _____ in my veins
I do whatever it ______
'Cause I love how it feels when I break the ____
Whatever it _____
Yeah, take me to the ______
I'm ready for whatever it _____
'Cause I love the ________ in my veins
I do what it ____
Song Follow up
If the class liked the song, share this lyrics training link so they can practice at home.
Motivation Follow up
So, we've opened them up to the topic of goals and played some super positive power rock to get learners upbeat and motivated and now it's time for the killer blow:
What are your English Goals? To improve your vocabulary? To pass a test? Are you going to do "what it takes?"
Once students have identified their objectives,
ask them to come up with 3 things that they can do to achieve them. Board some suggestions from the class then get students to write down what they will do this week to achieve their goal. If this class is going to have any effect, it's really important the target is to do something in the short term and try and establish habits that remain once the enthusiasm inevitably wears off!
Writing Follow up
My Pet students chose interesting goals, then wrote a writing part 2 style article for homework:
Write an article about an achievement.
What was your achievement?
Why did you want to achieve it?
What did you do in order to achieve it?
How did you feel when you achieved it?
(I was very keen for them to learn the word "achieve"!)
In the next class we did roleplay celebrity interviews in which they discussed their successes.