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Around the city

Out and about

Travellers usually consider cultural and entertaining activities as well as interesting places when choosing a city to visit. In this section, you will create a guide suggesting places to see and activities to do in a city.

Prague
kirkandmimi. Prague (CC0)

Previous activities: Urban Tourism

What places in a city do you usually visit when you travel? Has your city got a lot of tourist places?. What do you usually do in these places? The activities below will help you answer all these questions and also prepare and do your next mission.  

Activity 1: A taste of a city - Vocabulary
  • Read the text entitled City Life. Identify the places in a city and the activities people can do there.
  • Do the activity suggested in step 1 to learn and practise more vocabulary on places in a city.

Step 1 - Vocabulary Activities

Take a map of your town/city (digital or in paper) and, with a classmate, find as many places from the list below as possible. Then take turns  to ask and answer questions a) and b). Use names of city places in your answers.

museum, cathedral, hospital, stadium, zoo, book shop,

theatre, baker's, market, art gallery, park, fairground,

cinema, shopping centre, church, library, clothes shop,

sports centre, school, music shop, chemist's

Find more city places on the englishwsheets.com page.

Questiions

a) What places do you usually go to on weekdays?

b) Where do you go at weekends? What entertainment activities do you do in these places?

Go to step 2 to reinforce your knowledge on city places.

Step 2 - Suggesting Places

1. With a classmate, take turns to complete the sentences with names of city places.  There may be more than one correct answer.

  • If you are ill and want some medicine, the right place is the...
  • You like going to concerts and watching plays. The best place for you is the...
  • A friend and you want to practise tennis. Why don't you meet at the...?
  • You need to borrow some books for your history project. You should go to the...
  • You need some bread to prepare a sandwich. You can buy it at the...
  • At the weekend, you and your friends meet to see several exotic animals. What about meeting at the...?   
2. Speaking. Suggest your classmate a  plan for the weekend. Include in your plan  two different places to go and some activities to do there. 

Activity 2: Fun in the city

Click on the  EFL Pinterest board image and take turms with a partner to speak about what people are doing in each image. Are they in the city or in nature? For this task, you will need to revise the use and form of the Present continuous to refer to actions in progress

Writing task Write an email to a friend who is coming to visit your town. Read an email sample on the testbig.com site before you start writing. When writing, follow the steps below:

  • Greet your friend
  • Recommend the best time to travel and mention some tourist places in your city.  

Hand your email to your teacher for correction and publish it on the Writing page of your Weebly site.

Activity 3: Out of the track

Enter the TimeOut website and read some information on unusual things to do in London. Which place is the most interesting for you? Why?

Speaking Think of your own area/region. Search for information on places that are unusual or not visited by tourists but that can be interesting.  Take some notes about the place and tell a classmate about the information that you have found. Consider in your presentation the points below.

  • Refer to the place location
  • Describe the place and the activities that people do there.
  • Finish your turn recommending your classmate about the place.
  • Then, listen to your classmate telling you about the place they have found.

  • Give a response to your classmate's recommendation. You can use expressions from the readandshare.com site to accept or refuse suggestions.

It is important that you know how to locate, describe and suggest tourist places because these language functions are essential in the mission you are about to start.

Extra resources

At the end of this section, you will have:

  • Learnt about places and activities in a city
  • Practised making suggestions
  • Written an informal email
  • Created and presented a guide based on a city

A city guide

In this mission, you and your classmates are going to play the role of travel agents by designing, editing and presenting a city guide. 

Museum

ChatridelSevilla. Museo Guggenheim (CC0)

Assessment:

Remember that you can evaluate other groups' work with the same criteria in these two rubrics. If you think that some criteria are missing, do not hesitate to tell your teacher and consider them to evaluate your classmates.

Read the information in the headings below to find out more accurately about what you have to do.

Your work
  • Get together in groups of four students and think of a town/city in your region and the places that are worth visiting. Choose one city which you all will describe in your guide. Distribute the tourist places among the members in the group.
  • If the city is nearby, each member in the group can go to the assigned place and take some images
  • There are plenty of online applications to create your guide. We suggest Book creator or Google Slides.
  • Consider the possibility of creating a video guide. In case you choose a city far from where you live, you can use a Chroma key and then edit the video with free images of city places that you can find on the net. The result may be awesome!.
  • Search for relevant information on the places: such as their history and what activties people can do there. Also, look for funny or unusual places that can interest visitors to this town/city.
  • Share with your group members the information you have found and agree with them on what to include in your guide.
  • Design the guide for travellers who are going to stay 4 or 5 days in the city.
  • Use both Present Continuous structures for future plans and adequate expressions to suggest these travellers an attractive activity programme in your city. Consider the examples below.
  • On the first day, in the morning, we are visiting the Natural History Museum. Why don't we have a pic-nic and enjoy nature? At midday, we are going to travel out of the city to watch some wonderful mountains and lakes(...)
  • Write a first draft of the guide script and let your classmates supervise it. Correct or suggest information in your classmates' drafts.
  • You will include an introduction to the city considering its location, the number of inhabitants and the weather.
  • Edit your guide and insert titles identifying the different places in the town/city or in its surrounding area.
  • Do not forget to include nice pictures and a map of your destination.
  • On a fixed day, you will present your city guide in front of your class group. When presenting, take turns to refer to the different places, how to get there and what people usually do in those places. You all should finish your explanation with a recommendation of the places.
Work promotion

Publish your guide on the page 'My Digital Resources' in your Weebly site. You can share it with the rest of classmates on Pinterest. To do this, remember to accompany your post with an image. 

Your work on this mission will be completely finished after answering the questions in the Learning diary section. Take your time and reflect on your learning process.

Learning diary

How is it going? Open again your Learning Diary (download in editable odt format, download in pdf)  on your site and create a new post on your blog with the title  'Around the city'. Click on Writing the post and answer the questions.