Life skills teacher’s notes
Appreciating literature
SELF STUDY
If students are working alone, note that 1, 3b, 4a, 4b and
the REFLECT ON IT box all have open answers. If possible,
give self-study students the opportunity to show you
their work or to exchange their work with other students.
  Before watching
WARMER
Ask your students how often they read. Ask the
class to exchange their answers and try and find a
pattern in them. Do boys read more often than girls,
or vice versa? Do people who are better at arts
subjects like languages and history read more than
people who are better at maths and science? Or is
there another pattern?
1 This exercise helps students to focus on books they
have read and enjoyed – recently or at any time in the
past. In class, they could use their completed fact files
as a guessing game by reading out all the information
except the title and author to classmates and seeing if
other students can identify the book and who wrote it.
  While watching
2a 24  VIDEO SKILLS  Ask students to read through the video
skills box before doing this exercise. In the exercise you
need to make sure students can only hear the speakers
and not see the screen. Students have to decide what
questions the speakers are answering.
Answers
1 Do you enjoy reading literature? Why?
2 How often and when do you read?
3 What’s the best book you’ve read?
4 What book has influenced or inspired you the most?
5 What fictional character do you most identify with
and why?
VIDEO SKILLS: Understanding book talk
This focus is designed to give further support in
understanding what is a long and at times complex text.
2b 24 This focuses on specific books that the speakers
mention. Make it clear that brief notes only are required,
and ask students to compare these in pairs or small
groups before you check answers. Some answers
are quite long, so students might only have picked
up on part of the answer, which should be accepted.
Be prepared to pause at the end of sections to give
students time to complete their notes.
This page has been downloaded from www.macmillangateway2.com
Photocopiable © Macmillan Publishers Limited 2016
B2+ Unit
Suggested answers
Noughts and It’s set in a fictional world that has aspects
Crosses to do with race that are applicable to the
Mallory Blackman real world.
It challenged his perceptions of how we
relate to each other in society, how we see
race, and how it’s affected the way that we
grow up.
The Giver It made her reassess her perspective of the
Lois Lowry world and want to read more similar books.
The Picture of It’s an interesting story (and it draws you in).
Dorian Gray It shows the different levels of humanity
Oscar Wilde and the different ways you can be a person.
It’s very exciting, interesting, with a lot of
plot twists.
A Series of They influenced her tastes and what she
Unfortunate Events likes in literature and in film.
Lemony Snicket
Roads to Freedom It really changed her perspective from a
Jean-Paul Sartre more childish one to a more adult one.
3a 24 Students are asked to do this exercise from
memory to make it more challenging, but they will
probably need to watch again to check their answers.
Answers
1 Chloe  ​2 Yuvraj, Ousama  ​3 Yuvraj  ​4 Bea  ​
5  Chloe, Sam  ​6 Sam, Nancy
3b Here, students are asked to compare themselves with
the speakers and choose the one whose relationship to
reading is closest to theirs.
  After watching
4a This task develops the life skill by encouraging students
to reflect on books that they like and use the ideas in the
video to help them understand why they appreciate them.
4b SKILLS 4 LIFE  This project further develops the life skill
by asking students to think about how they would adapt
a book they have enjoyed for the cinema. It encourages
them to think about how to transmit the book’s strengths
on the big screen.
EXTRA ACTIVITY
When students have written their proposal for a film
production company, they could role-play meetings
between authors and producers. The authors have
to try and persuade the producers to adapt their
chosen book, and the producers have to choose the
book they think would work best as a film.
REFLECT ON IT
This question is intended to provoke discussion
by questioning the assumption that people reading
a lot less is necessarily a bad thing. Make sure
students feel free to express whatever opinions
they have. Hopefully they will agree that there’s
something unique about reading.
1 of 1