Starting off

The task here is designed to get the students thinking about the year just finished. This will prepare them a little for the reading to come but it is mainly intended to get them interested in the topic of 2010. Set a time limit for the students to discuss their ideas in pairs and then nominate some students to tell the class of their ideas.

Before you read

This is to allow students to show their own opinions and ideas about Facebook. Put the students in pairs and tell each pair to choose a student A and a student B. Tell them to look at the example words already written and ask them to do the same with any ideas that fit. They can be factual words such as `games' because there are games on the Facebook website, or opinion words like `waste of time' as this is what some people might think about Facebook. After students have written their ideas and discussed them in pairs, elicit some of the words they wrote and reasons for them.

First reading

This is a simple scanning task to find the names, which requires students to find key words in the texts. Before giving out the texts, ask students if they can guess any of the names from their initials. Set a very strict time limit so that they don't read the texts too carefully at this stage.

Answers: 1. Mark Zuckerberg 2. Charles Lindbergh 3. Queen Elizabeth 4. Ayatollah Khomeini 5. Adolf Hitler 6. Joseph Stalin

Second reading

Give the students the task without any help or clues as to how to approach it. When they have finished, ask them to work in pairs or small groups and compare answers. If any students disagree, they should try to show why theirs is correct. Elicit the answers and look at the clues that students can find in the text and removed sentences which can help them to complete an exercise like this correctly.

Answers: 1. D The question logically follows the previous sentence and is answered in the following one. 2. F `He', is Mark Zuckerberg and there is a link with the preceding sentence which looks at how he wasn't famous before the film. 3. A `They' refers to the magazine editors, `the decision' was not to use Charles Lindbergh's photo earlier in the year 4. E The sentence following the gap gives examples of the groups mentioned in the sentence. 5.G This follows up from the preceding sentence. `It isn't the nicest person…it is the one who…' 6. B `D' would also logically fit here but has been used already. There is a question and then the final question asking what you think (the answer to the original question is)

Vocabulary 1

Allow the students to work in pairs. Before they look at the text, they should try to match as many words as they can. If there are any they aren't sure of, they should find them in the text and use the context to decide which is the correct definition. Make sure they realise that `deserve' can have a negative as well as positive meaning.

Answers: 1. d 2. f 3. a 4. c 5. f 6. b 7. e

Vocabulary 2

1. This is a chance for students to expand their vocabulary and to think about word families. Give them one minute to see if they can think of any of the words without looking in the text and then allow them time to find the words. Elicit what the words are before they do exercise 2.

Answers: 1. creator, creation 2. successful 3. fame 4. decision 5. scientists 6. controversial

2. This follow up exercise makes sure that students really understand the meanings of the words in the previous two exercises. Tell students to first look at the gaps and decide what kind of word is missing in each (e.g. 1 - a verb). That will help reduce the number of possible choices for each sentence. Elicit the answers in open class.

Exercise 2: 1. criticise 2. decision 3. policy 4. Scientists 5. regret 6. avoid 7. controversial 8. creator 9. nominated 10. fame

Grammar

1. The exercises here look at the uses of the Past simple and the Present perfect. Students first attempt to put the verbs into the correct form, remembering that some of them might be passives. When finished, they can check their answers in the text. Elicit the answers before they look at exercise 2.

Answers: 1. started 2. has he been chosen 3. overtook 4. became 5. has given 6. have won 7. was changed 8. has had 9. has changed 10. regretted

2. Students now match the sentences with their uses. The number of gaps shows how many examples there are of each kind of use. Tell the students that, sometimes, a sentence may correspond to more than one use but that one use is more obvious than the other (e.g. Something happened at an unknown time in the past and has a present effect). Elicit the answers.

Answers: 1: 1, 3, 4, 7, 10 2: 2, 8 3: 6 4: 5 5: 9

Speaking

The aim here is for students to share their own ideas and opinions on the topics that they have been reading about.. Set a time limit for each question and make sure that students speak English at all times. Also encourage them to give more than one or two word answers, justifying their ideas with reasons. When finished, nominate students to talk about one of the questions in front of the whole class.

Communication Task

This is designed to be a further opinion sharing task but this time students must try to agree with each other. It might be a good idea first to look at ways of agreeing, disagreeing, giving and justifying opinions. Give the students two minutes to think of their own ideas alone first and then put them in groups of four to share their ideas and try to agree on the best. Elicit ideas from each group at the end with reasons for their choices.

Communication task card for each student:

A magazine in your country is looking for ideas for a `person of the year' for 2010.

Think of ideas for the following categories.

• Man of the year (from your country)

• Woman of the year (from your country)

• Man of the year (international)

• Woman of the year (international)

• Group of the year

Now, get together with three other students and compare your ideas. Try to come to an agreement on one person for each category and justify your decisions.

TEXT

© Pearson Central Europe 2

The Time Magazine person of the year for 2010 was Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. As Facebook started in 2004 and overtook MySpace as the world's most popular social networking site in 2008, some people might think that this award is two years too late. 1 ______ Maybe because no world leader has deserved the award but more likely because of the film `The Social Network' which has been very successful. Many people think it will win at least one Oscar and it has given Zuckerberg `a face'. Before this year, Facebook was famous but he wasn't. 2 _______.

So, what is this `Time Person of the Year' award? In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. For some reason, Time Magazine did not put him on the cover of their magazine. 3 ______ They therefore wanted a reason to put him on the cover of the December issue of the magazine. As there wasn't much other news that month, they decided to put him there as `man of the year'. Several women have also won the award including Queen Elizabeth of the UK in 1952 but the title of the award was only changed to `person of the year' in 1999. 4 ______. These have included Hungarian Freedom Fighters in 1956, US Scientists in 1960 and `You' in 2006.

The last was to celebrate the fact that more and more people were using the internet to change the world through blogs and websites. The choice was criticised by many people, as was the decision, in 1979, to nominate the Ayatollah Khomeini. The reason for that choice was that the person chosen is not the nicest or best person in the world. 5 ______ . In 1938, this was Adolf Hitler and in 1939 and 1942, it was Joseph Stalin. However, since the Ayatollah won the award, the magazine has changed its policy and avoided choosing controversial people.

6 ________. What do you think?

All over the world, the New Year is celebrated with fireworks. Thousands watch huge displays in capital cities and millions of other people buy their own and light them in their garden or street. Here are a few of the most popular types.

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