Written by: Carr, Martin, James
I guess that would never change
Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Objective: Practicing wishes and regrets
1) Before you play the song, ask the students to get the gist of it on the first listen. What’s it about? Can you hear any words or phrases?
2) See how much they are able to get from the song. Obviously what they get depends on their listening ability, and even at an advanced level I wouldn’t expect them to get much more than a fragment of the idea.
3) Share some of the key vocabulary from the song. In my class I wrote it on the board, but you could use this Wordle if you have the means.
Play the song again and ask the students to note down as many of the singers wishes as they can, using the vocabulary to help them.
Wishing I had money, wishing for the time to spend it all – I wish I had lots of time to spend lots of money (suggests he doesn’t want to work)
5) Now they know what the song is about, ask them to write down the singers wishes in a variety of ways. My students were revising ‘wishes and regrets’, so they wrote things like:
“He wishes he was better looking.”
“He regrets eating so many donuts.”
“He thinks “If only I could meet a pretty girl”.”
6) Because this was a revision activity, I stopped there, but you could then go on to ask your students to write their own wishes and regrets at this point.
The Teacher James 