The goals and objectives of unit 7 are learning how to answer yes/no questions in the simple past tense, as well as learning about the 5Ws: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. This unit primarily has students use “weekend/vacation activities” as a topic to achieve its grammatical goals. Unit 7 also includes learning how to conjugate irregular verbs such as “to be” and “to do.” The students also learn how to conjugate regular verbs in the simple past. Using these verbs, activities in this unit consists of students filling in the blanks and communicating with one another. Contractions are another point of focus in this unit, having the students learn to use “wasn’t” and “weren’t.”
The types of activities included in unit 7 are focused in the simple past. For example, the very first activity within the unit has students listening to a conversation between “Rick” and “Meg” about what they did on the weekend. The second activity is a supplement to the first: students are required to fill in the blanks regarding actions done over the weekend using verbs in the simple past. At the end of the chapter, students will be ready to write their own postcards, as well as read their peers’ (Richards et al. 44). There are listening sections in between activities to supplement what they have learned in the previous section, complete with writing about what they hear and fill-in-the-blanks. Many of these activities usually have one or two sections dedicated to the grammar, and then have students use both their verbal and written skills to complete the rest. The first “grammar focus” is right at the beginning of the chapter, while the second grammar focus is near the end.
This unit has much to offer students in terms of engagement. Several of the activities focus on students interacting with one another and interacting with the class as a whole. Much of these activities ask the students to incorporate personal stories and to create their own stories on topics such as vacations. There are a lot of opportunities for the students to practice their verbal skills, however this means that there are not many activities relating to the written aspect of learning a language. This is where the unit falls short. Out of the 14 activities this unit provides, only one of them requires a student to write independently. The rest of the writing activities are usually coupled with a listening or conversation activity, as is the case with activities 8 and 9. Activity 8 has the students listening to “Celia” and “Don” talk about Don’s vacation, while activity 9 has students filling in blanks about vacations using the past simple of “to be” (Richards et. al 47). While not necessarily bad, they do make up the majority of the chapter. There should be more opportunities within the chapter for the students to write independently, rather than simply completing sentences.
Works Cited: Richards, Jack C., Jonathan Hull, and Susan Proctor. Interchange 1: 3rd Edition. 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 44-47