A free downloadable lesson based around the recent Dove advertisement, showing the huge difference between women’s views of their looks and how other see them. The lesson starts by focusing on collocations to describe facial features, such as thick hair, full lips and so on. Students then watch the video and discuss some of the issues raised, including self -esteem, the role of the media,and differences between men and women. More language to describe physical appearance is ‘pulled out’ of the video, and the lesson ends with students writing detailed descriptions of themselves.
An optional extra that might work well to lighten the class a little is a very funny spoof video, where some men find out that they are actually much uglier than they think they are! The link is in the accompanying notes.
The lesson is suitable from B1+/Intermediate +
Download PDF here: ELT Resourceful – Real Beauty
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Wow, I work at a Beauty high school that focuses on training the students to be hairdressers and beauticians, so I think this lesson will really interest them. I embarrassed myself a lot though by laughing at the spoof video in my staff room, surely it’s not true!
Even more embarrassingly, for the first few minutes I didn’t realise it WAS a spoof. I thought the women were being really unkind…
Thank you so much for sharing this lesson. You’re truly a master in exploiting a document! This one is so perfect for renewing that old lesson of mine about physical appearance! You’re a generous genius !!!
For the spoof ad, even if I’m usually a gender equity advocate, here I thought women were really too caricatural and I didn’t want to show that to my students when I realised it was not real!!! I’ll eventually show them to see their reactions, they’ll surely be less naive than me !
Really glad you liked it Sarah. Not sure I’ve ever been called a genius before 😉
I think the spoof is well done. They’ve copied the format sop closely that it does take a while for the penny to drop (that’s my excuse, anyway). But it isn’t very flattering about either men or women. Would provoke some strong reactions, which might or might not be a good thing, depending on the class.
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Reblogged this on Stop Complaining – Enjoy Teaching! and commented:
Another lesson using that Dove commercial 🙂
Age: teen and up
Level: B1+
Language: collocations, body vocabulary, comprehension, discussion, writing descriptions
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Hi Rachael. I’ve just discovered your blog and it’s amazing. Your blog is full of practical ideas that we can apply in our classrooms and you have brilliant ideas in the lesson you prepared. I could see that we don’t need to stick to coursebooks everytime. With a video, we can have brilliant lessons. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks very much, Esin. I’m certainly not anti-coursebooks ;), but it’s good to mix things up a bit, isn’t it?
I am not against either. You are definetely right, mixing things up is a good way to engage the learners.
🙂
This lesson is amazing. It’s exactly the kind of lesson I’ve been looking for for my beauty-obsessed 12-year old female student!! Thank you so much for putting it together!
Thank you 🙂 Hope they enjoyed it.