Lost at the airport

Imagine that you are lost at Madrid airport. Would you be able to make sense of these signs?
Match up the Spanish and English by writing the correct letters in the grid below.

1= 2= 3= 4= 5= 6= 7= 8= 9= 10 =

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

a. b. c. d.

e. f. g. h.

i. j.

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 Lost at the airport
Teaching notes

This resource was created for the European Day of Languages but could also be used with key
stage 3 or 4 students studying the holidays and transport topic. Although the matching task is in
Spanish, the resource could be equally engaging for students who aren’t learning the language –
if not more so!

To begin, set the scene by reading the story below. Apparently, this is not fake news and
actually happened to a real person in a European airport this summer …

‘A young man was travelling on his own back from Bangkok this summer via a very big European
airport. He was probably quite tired after a very long flight. While walking to passport control
he decided to go to the toilet and, when he came out, everybody else from his flight was gone.
The corridor was deserted.

Feeling disorientated, he was not sure if he should walk to his left or to his right in order to
continue to passport control. The signs and information around the airport did not make any
sense to him, as he did not speak the language. He decided to go left.

Soon he came to a closed door, so he pressed a button alongside it, thinking this would open the
door. In fact, this triggered several alarms as it seemed that somebody was trying to access a
security area.

The terminal had to be evacuated, about 200 flights had to be cancelled, and around 1000
people had to spend the night in hotels around the airport waiting for their flights to be
rescheduled.

The young man was arrested, taken to the police station and interrogated. He did not know
what to say – just that he had got lost after going to the toilet and then pressed the wrong
button. He will probably never forget this flight back from Bangkok.’

Answers

1=b 2=g 3=e 4=i 5=d 6=a 7=c 8=j 9=f 10 = h

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