My world, my opinions

Abstract

In February 2009 I had the opportunity to travel abroad for the first time in my life through an exchange program called Au Pair. I was excited and scared because I had never been away from my family before. I was determined to make the best out of it and I knew it would be a great chance to accomplish international work experience. I found out about this program through one of my teachers at college and afterwards I started researching more about it online. I got very well-informed and convinced this exchange program would be the best choice to improve my English skills, to travel around and to learn more about differentcultures. Many people haven´t heard about this exchange program and how traditional it is. Most of the people also don´t know it is for both girls and boys. It was definitely a lifechanging experience and with that in mind I had the inspiration of my first unit, Beyond borders from this teaching material. The second unit, It´s all about money, was inspired byJessie J´s song Price Tag. I think money and happiness are very disputable topics to discuss and it definitely instigates questioning and thinking. The two units from this teaching material cover all four abilities of the language through communicative tasks. The topics chosen are developed in order to be authentic and meaningful, giving students the chance to express their opinion both orally and written. It also takes into consideration the written text genre. The materials chosen also require students to read, listen, to infer from it and to practice grammar points their meanings and use. The assessments follow the same themes from the units. This work is also composed by a CD with the listening activities and the videos used in each unit. The target audience who will work with this material are intermediate students from private language institutes whose age range from 15 to 50 years old who can read and interpret well. This teaching material has no commercial purpose and it can only be r eproduced for educational purpose and with the previous consent of the author.