13.05.2011 13:46

Teaching tip: 'Network Now Starter' - Language and culture, Magazine, Now me

The Language and culture pages give your students extra information on aspects of everyday life in English-speaking countries and can be used either in the classroom or at home. They can be found at the end of each Unit and the key to the exercises is included in the student's course book. The texts in the first two Units are in German, in Units 3-6 there are texts in English with extra information in German.

If you have time and want to integrate the Language and culture texts into your lessons, start by taking one, two or all of the titles from the texts, as suitable, and ask students what they already know about that topic (e.g. Great Britain and Afternoon tea from Unit 1, Post boxes from Unit 2, English around the world from Unit 3). They may only be able to give you single words at this stage, but encourage them to say what they can in English.

You will find the Magazine pages at the end of Units 2, 4 and 6. These double-spread pages are designed to be used in the classroom to show your students that learning and using English can be fun as well and not only work!


The pages have material for about ninety minutes. There are quite a lot of new words in the quizzes and texts. Leave ten minutes at the end of the lessons for students to choose six or seven words which are new for them and which they would like to remember. Get them to write their personal words down with their translations. If you have time, walk around and make a note of a few of the words people are writing down. Play a vocabulary revision game like hangman or anagrams to finish off the lesson.

The Now me pages are for the students to check their progress at home. If you feel your students need it, use the last ten minutes of the lesson beginning a new Unit to let your students ask you questions on those pages.