Are you ready for a vacation, but don’t know where to go? Have I got a fantastic tool for you. The Washington Post offers this wild vacation planner tool. All you have to do is answer their questions and the computer will generate the top vacation spots based on your answers.
Is that not an awesome ESL exercise! I was beyond tickled when I stumbled on this gem of a website. Not only is it super useful for the common mortal, but it is also a fantastic speaking, reading and conversation exercise.
The questions are interesting and the options are funny. You may need to help the students with some of the jokes and figurative language, but once they understand that they don’t really have to understand everything verbatim, they should have a good time.
The articles are well written, perhaps a little challenging at times, but include many pictures.
How I would Teach This
- Get students in pairs. One person asks the questions and the other answers
- Let the computer generate the results
- Ask each student to choose an article, even if they are not the traveller. Each read and then do a Tell Back on the content.
- Switch roles and repeat steps 1 to 3.
The article: Washing Post Vacation Finder
Let me know how it turns out.
Bon voyage
