I am currently teaching an American Culture class at a small, non-profit program in the city. My class consists of about 7 high-intermediate/advanced adult students from various countries.
My program's curriculum is very loose. I basically give the students a list of various cultural topics and historic topics, and they choose what they'd like to study.
They've expressed an interest in devoting a class period to the War on Terrorism. But, I don't know where to start. I cannot seem to find an ESL textbook that addresses it. Besides that, I am sort of confused about where and/or how to start.
The previous teacher of the class suggested that I lecture about:
- What is terrorism?
- Terrorism in the US (9/11) and abroad
- The role of Internet in terrorism (recruitment of terrorists through the Internet)
- Using freedom of speech in GB and the USA to promote religion of the terrorist groups over the satellite to the Arab countries, such as Tunisia.
But, to be honest, I don't know what to say about these topics. In order to provide a lecture about them, I'd have to do some research and prepare a lot. Also, I'm not a big fan of simply lecturing to my students. Besides this, what activities could they do to practice their knowledge? I'm just not sure where to begin.
Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Any help would be much appreciated by me and my students.
Stromgol: I don't see how your post is relevant to the question I posed.
Tdol: As always, your help is much appreciated. I had forgotten all about that website. Thanks!
For anyone else who reads this thread and is interested, I found another source for lesson plans dealing with the 9/11 attacks and terrorism. The link is found on the New York Times' website.
Here it is:
Issues In Depth
I think browsing through publication of Noam Chomsky for critical reading would be very interesting and your students might appreaciate it. Esp. the book 9-11.