Reading about fast food

Perhaps the best example of traditional ‘British’ fast food is fish and chips, which means deep-fried white fish with chips that are much (8)____________ than the American-style fries you find in most burger restaurants. The country has more than 11,000 fish and chip shops, and the British (9) ____________ eats fish and chips more than 250 million times a year, which means almost five times a year for (10) ____________ man, woman and child.

Many foreigners could find some things a bit strange in a fish and chip shop, for example the fact that many customers put a lot of salt and vinegar on their fish and chips, or the ‘mushy peas’ some people eat as an accompaniment. You could (11) ____________ mushy peas as a hot, thick, light green, pea-flavored paste, which perhaps doesn’t sound very nice. In fact, they are one those kinds of food that generate strong opinions – most people either love them or (12) ____________ them.

When most people hear the words ‘fast food’ they probably think of cheap, hot food sold in a place where they don’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes between (1) ____________ and taking their first bite, and where they can either ‘take away’ or ‘eat in’. They probably also (2) ____________ food they can eat with their fingers, without any (3) ____________.

In Britain, as in many other countries, hamburgers are among the most popular kinds of fast food, and the biggest chain of burger restaurants is McDonald’s. The first McDonald’s (4) ____________ in Britain in 1974, and now you can find them in many British cities. The restaurants in Britain recently added salads, fruit and sandwiches to their traditional (5) ____________ of burgers, fries and soft drinks.

Kebabs, which usually consist of pieces of hot chicken or lamb in pitta bread with salad and chili sauce, are also very popular. They are a part of Middle Eastern (6) ____________, and provide a good example of how ‘foreign’ (7) ____________ has become very popular in Britain in the last 40 years or so.

A

Fill the twelve gaps in the text on Worksheet A with the correct words from the box below. There are four words that you will not need to use.

B

Decide whether or not the following statements have been written in correct English. Then bet a minimum of 10 points up to a maximum of 50 on your choice.

Teacher’s notes

How to use the lesson

1. Brainstorm what your students know about fast food, both in its local and international forms. Also ask them what kinds of fast food they imagine are popular in Britain.

2. Divide the students into pairs and give them five to ten minutes to read through the text on Worksheet A, encouraging them to look up new vocabulary. Tell them they are going to have to fill the gaps with appropriate words. You could perhaps suggest that they guess what the words might be.

3. When the time is up, hand out Worksheet B and give the students another five to ten minutes to fill the gaps using the correct words from the box. Make it clear that (a) there is only one possible word to fill each gap, and (b) there are sixteen words in the box but only twelve gaps in the text, meaning that four of the words should not be used.

4. Check answers in open class.

5. Keeping the students in their pairs, ask them to try the second exercise on Worksheet B, in which they have to read some statements and decide whether or not they have been written in correct English. (The only errors the statements might contain are grammatical or lexical.) In the first column, after the statement, they should write Y for Yes if they think the English is entirely satisfactory, or N for No if they think the statement contains one or more mistakes. In the second column they have to write the number of points they are willing to ‘bet’ on their answer (10 points if they are forced to guess, going up to 50 if they are very confident). As the sentences include vocabulary from the first part of the exercise, try to ensure that students attempt it without referring back to Worksheet A.

6. After the pairs have given their answers, it’s time to score. Each pair calls out their answer and how many points they have bet. If they have answered correctly, students enter their points in the final column (points won). If they have answered incorrectly they should enter their points in the third column (points lost). In each of the cases where a statement contains a mistake, ask one of the students who answered correctly to explain why the statement is incorrect, and what the necessary corrections would be. At the end, students subtract the total of the third column from the total of the fourth column to give the total number of points they have won. The pair with the most points wins.

Answers

Part A (gap-fill)

1. ordering 2. imagine 3. cutlery 4. arrived 5. menu 6. cuisine 7. food

8. fatter 9. population 10. every 11. describe 12. hate

(Words that should not be used: all, saying, built, cooker)

Part B (‘betting’ on statements)

1. Yes

2. No. Some people put tomato source sauce on their fish and chips.

3. Yes

4. No. Kebabs usually consist of hot chickens chicken or lamb in pitta bread.

5. Yes

6. Yes

7. Yes

8. No. British ‘chips’ are more fat fatter than American-style ‘fries’.

9. No. I think it’s strange that so much many British people put vinegar on their fish and chips.

10. Yes

11. Yes

12. No. I’d like fish and chips on to take away, please.