Starting off

Complete the table below for your last two holidays.

	Holiday #1	Holiday #2
1. When was it?
2. Where did you go?
3. Who did you go with?
4. What did you do?
5. Was it fun?
6. Would you do it again?

Work with a partner. Tell each other about your holidays.

Before you read/First reading

You're going to read an article about holidays in the future. Look at the holidays below and try to decide which holidays are available now and which might only be available in the future.

holidays in space

holidays under the sea

holidays in the Antarctic

holidays on Mars

Read the text quickly to check your answers

Second reading

Read the text again more carefully and decide if the sentences below are true (T) or false (F).

1. According to the text, holidays are very common nowadays. T ☐ F ☐

2. Cook's holidays were for the very rich. T ☐ F ☐

3. The rooms at the undersea hotels are cheap. T ☐ F ☐

4. In Kubrick's film, holidays on the moon were not very popular. T ☐ F ☐

5. We know how much Dennis Tito paid for his trip into space. T ☐ F ☐

6. There is always a market for new and strange holiday destinations. T ☐ F ☐

Vocabulary 1

UBIQUITOUS RELATIVELY LITERALLY CONFINED (TO) INHOSPITABLE PRIVILEGE

1. limited to (ADJECTIVE)	2. an advantage or favour given to one person or a very limited group (NOUN)
3. a place which is difficult to live or stay in because it is so unpleasant or dangerous (ADJECTIVE)	4. meaning exactly what it says (ADVERB)
5. compared to other things (ADVERB)	6. seeming to be everywhere (ADJECTIVE)

Vocabulary 2

Complete the sentences with words from Vocabulary 1.

1. People live in deserts, in the mountains - even in the arctlc. People live in the most _________________ places.

2. We have computers at work, at home, in shops… they really are _________________ machines.

3. There are _________________ millions of stars in our galaxy.

4. I feel very lucky to have worked here. It has been a _________________.

5. My house is _________________ large for the town.

6. The job includes a lot of office work but it is not _________________ that - there is a lot of travelling as well.

Third reading

Four sentences have been removed from the text - one from each paragraph. Read the text carefully and decide where the sentences should go.

PARAGRAPH 1 - TRADITIONAL HOLIDAYS

…when he began organising and selling tickets for packaged trips in Great Britain and, later...

PARAGRAPH 2 - BENEATH THE WAVES

...for those with the money, the time and the desire...

PARAGRAPH 3 - AMONGST THE STARS

...all bright white walls and strange chairs...

PARAGRAPH 4 - THE FUTURE OF HOLIDAYS

...a holiday in Antarctica, anyone?

Speaking

What would your ideal holiday? Work with a partner to plan it. Think about

• When you would like to go: what time of the year, what season…

• Where you would like to go: the country, region, city; one destination or more...

• How you would like to travel: by plane, by car, by train, by boat...

• How long you would like to go for...

• Who you would like to go with: friends, family, by yourself...

• What you would like to do...

When you have planned your holiday tell the rest of the class about it.

A Monthly Newsletter for Teachers of English

June 2009

© Pearson Longman 2009 PHOTOCOPIABLE

A C T I V I T I E S S H E E T

June 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 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, `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 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. 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.

- 4 -

---