Starting off

This is a personalised task which relies on the learners being ready to share information. They will need, therefore, sufficient time to prepare. Completing the table, while not strictly necessary for the task, will help them with the speaking task and it is recommended that you use the tables.

Before you read / First reading

A straightforward prediction task which serves to give them an initial reading task.

Second reading

Key:

1. True

2. False

3. False

4. False

5. False

6. True

Vocabulary 1

Key:

1. confined (to)

2. privilege

3. inhospitable

4. literally

5. relatively

6. ubiquitous

Vocabulary 2

Key:

1. inhospitable

2. ubiquitous

3. literally

4. privilege

5. relatively

6. confined to

Third reading

See Teacher's Copy text for key.

Speaking

The prompts are really only included to provide some guidance for the learners at the start of the discussion; it is to be hoped that the learners will move beyond these particular details. Remember to give the learners sufficient preparation time if you want them to present their ideas to the class.

Extension

The speaking task lends itself to writing skills extension (a letter from the imaginary holiday they selected, for example) but, depending on the preferences of the learners, you might develop the topic more as a discussion, giving the class prompts to discuss (the negative sides of tourism, for example).

TEACHER'S NOTES AND KEY

June 2009

© Pearson Longman 2009

TRADITIONAL HOLIDAYS Holidays as we think of them today - going away from your home, usually to a place far away, often to another country - are so ubiquitous that we forget that they are in fact a relatively modern invention. The first holidays were `invented' by Thomas Cook in the middle of the 19^th when he began organising and selling tickets for packaged trips in Great Britain and, later century around Europe, the United States and the world. Before Cook trips abroad were the preserve of the super-rich and were almost always related to business or diplomacy; thanks to Cook ordinary people began to travel for pleasure and, soon enough, to expect to be able to take holidays with some regularity. BENEATH THE WAVES Does the idea of looking out of your hotel window and seeing tropical fish swimming past sound good to you? Well, for those with the money, the time and the desire, `future' holidays are quite possible today. Underwater hotels are already open or will open later this year in locations as far apart as Fiji, the Bahamas and Dubai. You can expect the heights of luxury - restaurants galore, shops, sports centres, golf courses, tennis courts, even a wedding chapel - just don't expect the rooms to be cheap! AMONGST THE STARS If a trip to the bottom of the sea isn't enough to excite you, what about a journey that is, quite literally, out of this world? The idea of holidays in space is not a new one: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey featured a trip to moon Station V, where tourists could stay at a busy Hilton hotel, for example, though - all bright white walls and strange chairs - the decoration was strictly 1960s. The first space tourist was an American, Dennis Tito, who in April 2001 travelled on a Russian

Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, where he spent seven days as a tourist, orbiting the earth 128 times; for his trip Tito reputedly paid $20 million. Four other men and one woman have travelled commercially into space since Tito, all but one of them American. THE FUTURE OF HOLIDAYS With holidays in space no longer confined to the realm of film, what else can the future hold for us? Further and further away - to Mars or beyond, for example - or perhaps trips to ever more inhospitable corners of our own planet - a holiday in Antarctica, anyone?. One thing is for sure: however strange the place, there will always be someone like Dennis Tito, ready to pay, and pay well, for the privilege of being first.

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