What will life be like in the future? Some ideas that sound like science fiction, like robots in our homes, meat from a lab and computer chips in the brain, are already here. This lesson looks at some amazing new inventions and gets students talking about which ones they would like and what their own future might look like. This A2 version uses short, simple texts and practises vocabulary for inventions, science and the body, with will for predictions.
Level: A2 · Time: 45 to 90 minutes. Pick the activities that suit your class. They work in almost any order.
Lesson Activities
- Warmer: What’s in the Dish? – Reveal the picture tile by tile. What is it? Where do you think it came from? (Answer: the world’s first lab-grown burger, made from cow cells in 2013.)
- Vocabulary: Pre-teach the Key Words – Match 10 words from the reading to their meanings (invention, scientist, predict, grow, kidney, forever…).
- Reading: The Future Is Already Here – A graded text with 10 gaps, a word bank and slow audio.
- Vocabulary and Ideas: Already Here or Science Fiction? – Students sort 14 inventions into things that already exist and things that are still science fiction. Works well before reading (to predict) or after (to review).
- Discussion: The Future – 10 easy questions about technology, robots, time travel and students’ own future.
- Speaking: Ranking – Which future invention would you want first? Students rank nine, from a car that drives itself to a time machine, then compare with a partner.
Teacher Tips
- For a shorter lesson, use the warmer, the reading and the discussion cards.
- The reading has slow audio. Play it after students have tried the gaps, so they can listen and check.
- Grammar focus: will and won’t for predictions (Tiny robots will connect our brains to the internet. This will probably never happen.). Ask students to make three predictions about life in 2050.
- The ranking uses some longer phrases (teleportation, translates any language). Go through them together first.
- Follow-up: students write five sentences about their life in 20 years, using will, won’t and probably.
Teaching a stronger group? Try the B2 version of this lesson.
Photo: World Economic Forum, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.