2 Flash mobs

1 Do you read any blogs? If so, what are they about?

2 a Before you read, check these words/phrases with your teacher or in a dictionary.

freeze (Past Simple: froze) a statue an audience kneel a toy dinosaur

b Cover the text. Look at pictures 1–3. What do you think is happening in each picture?

3 Read the blog. Were your guesses in 2b correct? What is a ‘flash mob’?

www.bloggersworld.org/flashmobs

1 2 3
Archive topics

Frozen Grand Central and Other Flash Mobs

This week’s topic
ExTRA READING:

It was 2.29 on a cold Saturday afternoon at Grand Central station in New York City. People were running to catch
photocopiable

trains, buying tickets and talking on mobile phones. Suddenly, at exactly 2.30, hundreds of people turned into
statues. One man froze as he was trying to pick up some papers; another froze as he was eating a hamburger.
However, not everybody stopped moving. About half the people in the station continued walking around as
normal, trying to work out what was happening.
‘Frozen Grand Central’ was a brilliant example of a flash mob. Flash mobs are events where large groups of
people suddenly arrive in a public place, do something unusual, and then go away again. The organisers usually
post information about the event on the internet, telling people where to meet and what to do. Then they make
a film of the results and post it on the internet. Usually the funniest thing about these videos is watching the
reaction of people who didn’t know what was going on.
Discussion forum

Another example of a flash mob was at a concert of the Black Eyed Peas in Chicago, as part of Oprah Winfrey’s
TV show. When the music started, nobody in the audience moved except one young woman at the front, who
was dancing wildly. Gradually, the people around her started doing the same dance and soon the whole audience
of 20,000 was dancing with her. The only person who didn’t know what was happening was Oprah Winfrey.
Flash mobs started in 2003, when a man called Bill sent an email to his friends and asked them to pass it on to
their friends. In one of his early flash mobs, he asked 400 people to go to a toy shop and kneel in front of a giant
toy dinosaur. After that, flash mobs started spreading all over the world. In fact, there’s probably one in your town
or city this month!

4 Read the blog again. Are these sentences true (T) or false (F)?
1 Grand Central is a train station in New York.
2 Nobody knows why the people in Grand Central
station froze.
3 Some people at the station didn’t know what was
happening.
4 People usually hear about flash mobs online.
5 You can watch videos of flash mobs on the
internet.
6 Oprah Winfrey organised a flash mob in Chicago.
7 At the beginning of the Black Eyed Peas concert,
nobody was dancing.
8 The first ever flash mob was in a toy shop.

5 What do you think about flash mobs? Would you like to join a flash mob? Why?/Why not?
again. 4 1T 2F 3T 4T 5T 6F 7F 8F
3 A flash mob is an event where large groups of people suddenly arrive in a public place, do something unusual, and then go away

216 face2face Second edition Pre-intermediate Photocopiable © Cambridge University Press 2012 Instructions p209