You have been selected as your class representative! You have been asked to offer advice to your friends and community members about what to do when they have strong feelings in a new situation. Your task is to find out how other students or family members feel in different situations and prepare advice to give to your friends. Also, you will have to prepare a poster with advice that will help everybody feel better, which will be put up on the wall of the class.
Winter is here and we need to make sure that everyone in the community stays updated on the weather conditions. You will be the community weather reporter. You will tell others about the winter weather and respond to questions about what the weather is like yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This will help your friends stay safe and warm, and to plan their outdoor fun activities.
You are the new museum manager and it is your job to recreate our aboriginal history through stories. You will ask parents, friends and other relatives about stories that were told when they were children. You will then paint or take a picture to represent the story, with a few words to help. The classroom will become your museum exhibition hall full of unique, fun and interesting stories of our past. You will invite your friends and family to come visit.
Every year, there is a Fall Feast to feed the spirits. This year, you have been asked to work as a guide during the feast. You will prepare an invitation for your parents and grandparents, and then guide your family through the feast, teaching them about each type of food, how it was cooked, and its importance to the feast.
Your most anticipated holiday is here! Your family from overseas are coming to spend two weeks with you and your parents over the winter break. Your parents have been very busy with work and have asked for your help with the holiday shopping by purchasing gifts for all the members of your family. They would like each person to receive an article of clothing, and one other gift. You can spend $50 per person. Think about the likes and dislikes of each member of your family and what gifts might be most suitable.
You are planning to spend the weekend with your cousins, who live two hours away. Sunday is the birthday of one of your cousins. To get to your cousins’ place, you and one of your parents will take the train. He or she asks you to pack your backpack, reminding you that you don’t have to take everything, as your cousins will have many of the things you need such as towels, toothpaste, and soap. However, you have already assembled lots of things and your backpack isn’t very big. In addition, each of you wants to bring a birthday present for your cousin, and these presents have to be packed somewhere. Each of you will have to bring a backpack and make sure that it isn’t too full.
Two new students from different countries have just immigrated to Canada and will soon be joining your class. Your teacher has asked you to be a volunteer to be their buddy; that is, you will help the new students get familiar with their new school by welcoming the students, showing them around, being their guide and offering to help. The new students will arrive in a couple of weeks and because they don’t know much English/French yet, it would be nice if you could also learn a few words in the new students’ languages so they can feel more welcome.
You see a poster for an upcoming pow wow in your community, and you would really like to attend. You send a text to one of your good friends to see if they’d like to come with you. Your friend has never been to a powwow before, but they respond that they’d love to join you and that they are excited to experience it for the first time. Make detailed arrangements to meet with your friend at the powwow, letting them know the day, the time, and what they need to bring with them.On the night of the pow wow, send a text once you arrive to let your friend know the exact location where you’ll be waiting. Once your friend arrives, s/he has many questions about what is happening, so you will need to act as the guide. You will walk your friend through the pow wow, explaining the different activities/objects you see (e.g. singing, cooking, dancing) and pointing out your favourite things (e.g. the beautiful rings). When you return home, your friend sends you an email to thank you for the wonderful evening, and to let you know their most memorable parts of their first pow wow.
The preservation of the environment is a critical issue in our lives today. The town in Quebec where your francophone friend Thomas lives wants to be known as a “green municipality”. A Town Hall meeting is being organized in Thomas’ school, and the headmaster has asked the students to decorate the hall with posters illustrating actions that municipalities and their citizens across the world have done to preserve the environment. Unfortunately, Thomas cannot attend the meeting, so he has emailed you to attend on his behalf.
You are hosting an exchange student from another country (e.g., Syria) in your home for 2 months (e.g., during the summer time) and you will meet him/her at the airport. This student is going to your country (Canada) to learn English, but he/she knows very little English. You need to help him/her out by using English and some words in her/his language (e.g., Arabic) so you can communicate. The exchange student is arriving in a few weeks, so you have some time to get in touch with him/her through technology before you two meet face-to-face.
Your cousin has just invited you to attend a March break camp in Quebec. You’ll be staying at your cousin’s house while you both attend the camp. Your parents have told you that the camp must cost less than $350 for the week and should be relatively close to his house in Montreal. It’s already the last week of February, so you and your cousin will have to hurry to make all the necessary preparations. Together, find three camps which you like based on your shared interests, and you will need to compare the camps in order to make your final decision.
You are participating in an exchange program to Germany and you have lost your group after the city tour. Now you are trying to find your way back to the youth hostel, but unfortunately, your cellphone is out of battery. You cannot check online or call a friend. However, you do have a paper map and can ask someone on the street for help.
Some parents in your community have complained that their children are too picky with their food. They’re looking for interesting and tasty recipes to try out and have asked your class for help compiling a new community cookbook. You and your classmates have decided to contribute recipes from different cultures and countries around the world. For this task, each student will create one entry in the cookbook based on their family’s favourite recipe. When the cookbook is completed, you will put it all together and bring a copy home to your family.
In order to encourage younger community members to actively appreciate stories, your local library is asking the community to donate some of their favourite childhood fairytales. You take a look through your collection and decide that many of your favourites need to be updated because they are not written in German and do not include any modern morals that would interest the younger generation.
Your best friend, who doesn’t speak English, is visiting your city and you decide to invite them for dinner on Friday night. You need to spend some time searching for a restaurant together online. You both want to order a drink, a starter, a main course and a dessert, but your budget is only $40.00 each, and that will have to include taxes and a tip.
You have just been accepted as a volunteer for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea! You will be working in the Olympic Village as a guide for all the visiting athletes. It will be your job to help people from all over the world find their hotels, good restaurants and get to the right sport venues. What questions might the athletes ask you? You must prepare how you will be able to help the athletes. Part of your job is to know some important greetings and winter sports in several different languages so you can help as many people as possible. Finally, the committee wants you to create a welcome package for the athletes so they can best enjoy their time in Korea.
Your principal has noticed that there are fewer and fewer students signing up for language courses at your school and in your community. Next week, your language class will be launching a new blog to help promote a language throughout the school and beyond.
You are a professional blogger working for a Toronto language learning community blog. You’ve been assigned the responsibility of writing a brief personal interest blog entry about ‘English language learning journey’ from a personal perspective that readers can relate to. This is a very important contribution to the community blog as over half of the population in Toronto speaks a language other than English in their household. Your readers are interested in learning more about various languages and language learning strategies through the stories of their fellow community members.
Your class has found a time machine! The whole class will vote on which three places to go, but there are some limitations:
You can only go up to 100 years in the past and you can only travel to a place where someone that is in the machine (i.e., someone within your class) has lived.
The municipal government is looking to sponsor a major art installation for Toronto’s [or local city of choice] upcoming Nuit Blanche, a free, 12-hour, city-wide art exhibit featuring hundreds of artists from around the world. With the intent of inspiring understanding between cultural and linguistic communities, the city is asking for proposals for an interactive art installation that combines a celebration from one of the local cultures (e.g. Valentine’s Day in Canada) with elements from a similar or different celebration from one or two other cultures (e.g. New Year’s Eve in Thailand).
You and a colleague have just been hired as food guides by an Italian virtual tour company. You were both chosen because of your knowledge of Italian food and culture. A tour group from Milan is touring other regions of the country looking for a new and exciting culinary experience. Your job is to research their region of choice using history, geography, climate and economy to explain the food culture that exists there. You will then prepare a virtual tour to share with the visitors. The tourists will fill out a tour satisfaction after their tour, so be sure to make it engaging!
As informed citizens of your country, you have been asked by ___X____ university or college to help plan a unique and ground-breaking 12-week intensive study abroad course for 2nd or 3rd year environmental biology students. This course is inspired (in part) by the writings and knowledge of environmental biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer. The course you develop will have students visit three countries outside of Canada to learn from various sources about the local climate, biology and environmental practices. As this program is still in its planning stages, it is important that your course attracts a good number of students so that the program can continue. Your work will be presented and discussed at a curriculum developers meeting and, if successful, could lead to a collaboration with Wall Kimmerer.
You want to go to the movies with a few friends after school on Friday but you’re having trouble agreeing on the details. Talk to your friends to decide when and where you are going to meet for dinner, what movie you are going to see, and what time it ends. Don’t forget to give directions on how to get from the restaurant to the theatre. You have to be home by 10:00 p.m.
Meet with your friends and discuss/finalize all the necessary arrangements for the evening. Use a map to give directions on how to get to the theatre. Send an e-mail to your cousin to invite him/her to join you and your friends for dinner and the movie, and explain why it would be a great movie to see.
Imagine you are a student blogger writing for a local language blog here in Edmonton. You are the language expert and the community wants to hear about your experiences learning German. You will interview a friend about their experiences and share what they’ve learned to help others develop new language skills. You’ll then start an online discussion as you read others’ stories and respond to them.
You and a group are competing in the first international audiovisual competition, Huelva Music Video Contest 2018! The theme for this year is ‘ways of feeling in different languages’ and is meant for language learners to recommend songs that have helped them learn new languages. You and your group must present an oral proposal explaining your process and reasons for selecting your songs. A jury will select the videos based on language content, innovation, impact, feasibility, and creativity.