I'm having a bit of fun with this lesson.

One of the culturally-focussed classes this week is on drinking culture. There's some comparison between Chinese and Western drinking (yes, they do drink- a lot!), and some language practice on how you can ask people to go for a drink. As it happens most weeks, however, the materials people have managed to drain the lesson of everything that is interesting or fun about the topic and made it into 50 minutes of boring conversation and irrelevant readings without even explaining different drinks that we have in the West.

I therefore decided to completely redo the lesson and created an entirely Powerpoint presentation myself. This one is a lot more relevant to everyday situations and much more fun to teach (unless you're someone who prefers to talk about the downsides of alcohol consumption, which neither my nor the original lesson touch upon). I'm explaining different types of drinks and measurements, drinking idioms, and, with the help of another beer-loving colleague, have managed to dedicate an entire slide to synonyms for the word drunk. There's not much exercise or anything to it, it just presents you with about twenty words and expressions that all mean pissed, or hammered, or off your face. Tell you the truth, I was a bit nervous going into the lesson yesterday as I wasn't sure how the class would react to being presented with a slide full of rude language. And guess what- they loved it! Never have I seen twenty-five English learners write faster and with more enthusiasm. The final activity in the class is to create a story using a selection of rather random pictures (including one of my colleague drunk) and all the new language to crate a story about drinking. Worked just as well as the rest of the lesson, which means the effort has paid off and it's been successful so far.

Which is why I'd like to expand on that synonyms slide. Your input would be very welcome and much appreciated- do you know any interesting words or phrases to say drunk? if you do, please send them in!

Prost!

Nadine